Media 'must reform to ensure quality journalism'

Thepchai Yong, TBJA president and Nation Multimedia Group editor-in-chief, said media professionals should come up with clear and concrete ethical guidelines in the face of growing public pressure for quality journalism as expressed through social media.

“If Thai newspapers or television [stations] announce ethics mechanisms and accept complaints lodge by the public today and allow |outsiders to have a role in scrutinising it, this would lead to credibility,” he said. 

“However, no such mechanism exists today while there are people who are trying to push for media regulation laws and the media must think whether this is acceptable or not.” Thepchai cited a recent example in which many media outlets reported that the identity of the Erawan Shrine bomber was known but that was not the case, and no one seems to know how the media outlets got the same news.

Euajit Virojtrairat, director of the Media Monitor project, said the influence of the state over the media was still prevalent and as such achieving media reform was difficult. 

She cited radio as an example of that fact due to virtually all stations renting airtime from the state. 

She added that media organisations should seek to explain the context of conflicts in society instead of dramatising conflicting parties.

Vasant Paileeklee, former vice chair of the National Reform Council’s committee on media and IT reform, said fierce competition and profit making meant the media today did not really care what impact their news had on society. 

He urged media organisations not to put too much stress on making profits at the cost of society. He warned that without real reform, the public would continue to be fed sensationalised news. 

Vasant added that in the past a rookie reporter would be trained in-house for three months before being allowed to report in the field. 

Today, Vasant said, many reporters wanted to become TV news celebrities and it was up to universities to impart mass communications students the right DNA.

Pirongrong Ramasoota, assistant professor of the Communication Arts Faculty at Chulalongkorn University, admitted there were problems in training mass communication students, as many wanted to simply become famous instead of being a professional journalist. 

This, Pirongrong said, was due to the relatively low wages for reporters and the high cost of becoming a successful journalist. 

Many of her students, she said, detested the bureaucratic system in many news organisations.

Sumet Somkanae, chairman of Central Media Union of Thailand, said the explosion of digital televisions meant there was a shortage of qualified professionals, leading to substandard reporting and the stress for speed over credibility.