Public should referee battle over media freedom
Moves to tighten rules for the media are back on the agenda in the form of a new draft bill being considered by Parliament.
Drafted by the National Reform Steering Assembly’s media reform committee, the bill addresses standards, ethics and freedoms for journalistic practice, and has been the subject of much public debate.
Media organisations have voiced their opposition to the legislation, while agreeing in principle that current regulations should be made more effective given recent violations of privacy and decency in reporting, including the six-hour live broadcast of an incident that ended in a lecturer fatally shooting himself.
The biggest criticism of the draft bill is that it would open the way to interference in the media by “outside influences”.
“We agree in principle that there should be more effective media ethics-regulation mechanisms in place, but we do not agree with the idea to establish them as legally binding, especially the idea to set up a lawful national media professional council to regulate the media,” Thai Broadcast Journalists Association president Thepchai Yong, also chairman of the Working Group for Media Reform, said in a statement released by media organisations on Monday.
“This could leave a loophole for political and business entities to interfere with the media’s work, which ultimately would affect the people’s right to information.”
The draft bill would establish a new media professional council to oversee journalistic standards and practice via media organisations nationwide. The media organisations would be registered, with penalties for violations by media outlets under them including revocation of their professional certification.
The council would be partially financed by the government, which is a cause for further concern over potential outside interference from the state.
Media organisations have good reason to oppose a bill that would see them lose ground in their hard-fought battle for independence from state control and other outside influence.
However, a stalemate followed by inaction is no answer, since all sides have agreed that current media regulation is inadequate and requires tightening – though perhaps not full-blown reform.
The question is, how.
Years of debate has focused on concerns that too-tight regulation would jeopardise the spirit of press freedom, which is fundamental to people’s rights to information and sound decision making, while too-loose regulation leaves the way open to abuses of privacy and public decency.
Proposals for regulation by both stakeholders – the media organisations and the authorities – each have their strengths and weaknesses.
But a glaring absence in the debate so far is the third major stakeholder, the public, which is a beneficiary but also, frequently, a victim of Thai media practice as it stands.
As such, the public has every right to a major say in the debate on how to regulate the media and make journalists accountable when they overstep the mark.
The battle for control over information in Thai society has for too long swung back and forth between the state and the media. It’s time to give the public a bigger voice in the debate, along with more power over how the media behave towards society.