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A close look at Thai E-News: counter-media in a time of conflict.

Thai E-News: News about Thailand that you may not have read in the news’ is the slogan of one of Thailand’s leading political websites.  It has only content and no web board.  It is unabashedly ‘red’, but red with a strange smell.  It posts critical points of view from all circles.

Prachatai talks to Somsak Phakdidej, one of the founders, to find out how he thinks, how he works, and what his values are.

Thai E-News was born in silence, lives in mystery and does not know how mass media circles will define it.  Maybe as ‘fake media’, ‘a tool of politicians’, or ‘an example of using media to start a political war’.  Known as an alternative site that posts news that no one puts on normal blogs, it gets more than 40,000 clicks a day.

Today we will look closely at the phenomenon of news in cyberspace, where the power of producing and consuming news is in the hands of everyone equally.  Somsak Phakdidej is the secret name of one of the founders of Thai E-News.  He knew nothing of IT but is an active citizen sympathetic to democracy.  The set-up of this website is strange because the working team is small and they don’t know each other personally.  Their common background is the Ratchadamnoen room on the Pantip web board where they developed similar views in discussion since 2005-6.

‘Our policy is that you don’t need to know me, I don’t need to know you, but we know each other’s opinions.

‘The Ratchadamnoen room had both pro and con Thaksin opinions.  I used to be with the opposition.  I opposed Thaksin, like the NGOs, on account of his multiple conflicts of interest.  When Sondhi Limthongkul started to become the centre of the rallies close to the coup, I got the sense that they were going beyond the role of a people’s movement.  And then in the evening of 19 September 2006, the coup happened.

‘Thai E-News was created on 5 November 2006, in a very tense atmosphere, since Pantip’s policy was to close the Ratchadamnoen room “for security reasons”.

‘At the time of the coup, many people, both pro-democracy and pro-Thaksin, had nowhere to go, so they crowded into the Prachatai web board, including me.’

Somsak says that Thai E-News was created because they saw a big problem with the media.  The mainstream media have a clear bias in presenting information.  

‘What the Thaksin side did was completely black.  So we wanted to create a media that wasn’t an alternative media, but counter-media, against the flow of the mainstream media, which had become a tool of the dictatorship.’

The principle of the counter-media is ‘anything that is not mainstream media news will be our news. Any mainstream media news that is propaganda or black propaganda, we will counter with the truth from another perspective.  When the Thaksin interview on Times Online is translated carefully, it is clear that Thaksin said one thing while the mainstream media claimed that he was going to overthrow the institution.  We took on the job of translating the whole thing.’

‘Our standpoint is pro-democracy.  Being pro-Thaksin is a secondary issue.’

The content that appears on the weblog is all kinds, as diverse as a big pot of mixed curry, with political analyses, political history, critical articles of the people’s movement, news that is not political like UFOs (which turned out to be balloons), news of the red shirt movement, and so on.

‘We get lots of news on activities sent in from all corners of the country and overseas, and when the activity has happened, the organizer has to send us a report because we have no reporters.’   

All content relies on e-mail conversations among the team and each does what they are good at – writing, analysis, translation.  Some are good at technical things and some like to surf and know where there are things they can take.

‘I have experience in media.  I know media and I know the nature of media very well.  We are a counter-current in everything, including media.  We see shocking things in other fields – among NGOs, human rights people, activists, academics – who naturally should be pro-democracy from what we know of their background and experience.  So we started to analyze why these people mostly approve of and accept dictatorship.’

Apart from networks who send in stuff, many “cyber-reporters” from various web boards report on important events and make observations, like the research that found that the red-shirt woman who was dragged by the hair wasn’t at the Din Daeng flats and it wasn’t because of the frustration of the people in the Din Daeng flats as the mainstream media reported.

‘Doing counter-stories all the time is tiring.  You have to research, get information for comparison.  In the end, the picture of the woman dragged by the hair got an award.

‘We use a blog because it’s free and it’s easy.  We use just two things – labour and heart.  No expenses; no need for profit.  And it’s easy enough for people with no IT experience.’

When the counter-current position is clear, the question is whether Thai E-News is propaganda for the opposite side.

‘When we started there were lots of questions about this.  We even asked each other (laughs).  

‘In fact we are concerned about one or two points.  One is credibility.  We quote here and there in reasonable detail.  It should be credible.  Two, people may say it is propaganda against propaganda.  On the team we have talked about this a lot.  If it’s black, we are white.  If it’s white, we are black. That would not make any difference.  We think that at least we should not use black propaganda, the kind that puts out lies.  We’ve never done that.  If the reds do something bad, we’ve never said it was good.

‘For example, when the PAD rallied on October 7, we don’t know what happened but someone lost a leg and there were deaths.  We have to report deaths and injuries because they were seen.  Many people on different web boards suggested he was already an amputee.

‘But if you say we use propaganda on one side to fight the other side, that could be true.  When the mainstream pushes society all one way, we see that it’s wrong and we suggest, from the pro-democracy side, that the truth is something else.  If you call that propaganda, we have to admit that we have to do this.’

But even if this is their job, they are clearly part of the red-shirt movement, but with sufficient independence.  They express disagreement with some of the red-shirt movement, like their statement disagreeing with the march on Gen Prem Tinasulanonda’s house on 19 September 2009 because Gen Prem wasn’t there.  Going there risked getting suppressed for nothing.  Somsak says that this counts as the first statement since Thai E-News was set up.  

‘If Thaksin does something crazy or goes astray, or the red shirts do something that we say is senseless, we have the freedom to criticize.  We should not get restrained for fear of disrupting the movement.  Such fear would make it even worse that disrupting the movement.’

In Somsak’s analysis, his readers are ‘reformers’ because on the basis of political opinion polls, republican sympathies are rare.  Most want the 1997 Constitution, new elections.  Most readers, 45%, are from Bangkok, 10% from overseas and 35% from upcountry.

A survey of the webpage at the time of the petition found that 75% wanted amendments to the constitution and only 2% approved of the amnesty petition for Thaksin.

‘We believe that people are going beyond Thaksin, at least people who read Thai E-News.’  Somsak says that they’ve kept statistics since the beginning, and between April 2007 and now, Thai E-News has averaged 40,000 hits a day, rising to 100,000 at hot times.

Whether you like the reports, articles and analyses that you read, you can’t exchange comments at the end of the piece or criticize them on the web board because there is no web board.  The creators explain that they had no expertise in that, and they did not aim to build a two-way communication forum like most websites with political content.

‘If we allowed comments, it would be difficult to look after.  It means a lot of work and we would have to find someone to do it.  It doesn’t fit with our structure, which is not looking for even the slightest profit.’

When asked about their goals or self-evaluation about things to change, the Thai E-News people modestly excuse themselves.  ‘Our readership is very small.  About what changes these readers can make, I have no great hopes.  At least pro-democracy people read us.  Many people who hate Thaksin read us.  We propose no civil war, though the current situation is leading to this.  At Songkran, the red shirts only had people who speak.  Now some soldiers are joining.  Khun Panlop is preparing soldiers.  There is talk that this time you shoot and I will shoot back, while the one side that has state power is ready to use violence.  All through history, we see that this side likes to use violence against the democracy movement.  Furthermore they have mainstream media put out biased reports that your lot are the ones who create violence, who like violence.  What can be done to restrain the army peacefully, such as amending a rotten constitution, promising to respect the voice of the people?’

If Thai Rak Thai could come back, would the job of Thai E-News be finished?

‘We basically believe in democracy.  The Thaksin issue is secondary.  In the red-shirt media, there are many shades of red – scarlet, rose, pink.  We stick to the basic principles of democracy.  What we’ve always tried to propose is democracy.  We like to cite the principles of democracy from the People’s Party and Pridi and how we will move forward, the principles of democracy as Socrates talked about them, sovereignty of the people, the principle of freedom, the principle of equality, the principle of law, respect for the voice of the majority while not abusing the voice of the minority.  

‘If you ask about new elections and Thaksin’s return, we think it’s no big problem.  The big problem is when will this country respect the principles of democracy and observe the rules of democracy.  This is what we have to accept.  If there is an election tomorrow and Bhumjai Thai wins, we should accept it.  An ABAC poll gave Abhisit a 70% approval rating.  If he wins the election, we have to accept it.  But the problem of politics here in our country is that there is a government up above a government, and the principles of democracy have been violated.

‘If the situation returned to normal, we had democracy and the media did its job, then I don’t know what the counter-current would be counter to.

‘But these times may be the worst for freedom.  People have been arrested on many charges.  

‘Today I should say who I am and what I think, but I can’t.’

Source: 
<p>http://www.prachatai.com/journal/2010/01/27275</p>

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