Mission: Bring Nation back to Earth

The seminar was organised by Google News Initiative, Cofact (Thailand) and network partners after their recent public survey of trust in Thai media’s political reporting. The survey revealed that Bangkokians had highest trust in media when it came to news reporting and presentation techniques (score 3.42), but lowest trust when it came to transparency and professional ethics of journalists (2.91).

“Trusted media is the most valuable asset for the journalistic profession,” affirmed Adisak, executive committee vice chairman at Nation Group (Thailand). “However, it is also the asset that is hardest to maintain.”

During a “Lightning Talks” seminar, Adisak revealed the core mission to “bring The Nation back to earth” as well as outlining changes and challenges that have shaken up Nation Group and Thai society over the past few years.

“What severely damaged our credibility as journalists was allowing Nation TV news anchors and moderators to influence the editorial team,” said Adisak. “There was no filtering whatsoever on what was presented on Nation TV programmes during 2019-2020. Anchors and moderators selected whatever they liked, including one-sided information and fake news, and then persuaded the audience to agree with them.”

“It is as though Nation TV audiences were being hypnotised during those two years,” he added.

Adisak said the decline of audience trust and confidence in the company was the turning point that spurred major change within the organisation over the past few years.

“The voice of news consumers made us think about what we had done wrong that caused over 50 of our employees to resign at the same time,” said Adisak, clarifying that the mass resignation had happened before his return to Nation Group as a vice chairman.

“This incident was the beginning of our return to the ‘Nation Way’ – the way of professional media. Since then, we have embarked on a mission to restore trust among news consumers and external parties, as well as raise the morale of employees through communication,” he said.

Adisak said Nation Group had learned from this lesson that trustworthiness is the most important asset of a media organisation. It is the hardest asset to keep but is also of the greatest value to all journalists.

“Trust in your media output leads to you being trusted as an organisation. I constantly reiterate the message to all Nation Group employees: stay committed to this principle,” said Adisak.