Media freedom extends beyond the political realm

Thailand’s leading media umbrella groups issued a statement last Sunday on the declining status of press freedom in this country. The statement dwelled on the obvious problem – post-coup restrictions on freedom of expression – while overlooking subtler complications in the modern media landscape. 

Non-political influences on the role of the media escaped the groups’ scrutiny. While the statement might remind the military rulers that they are being watched, it failed to deliver any such warning to media professionals.

“Freedom” in the context of the joint statement refers to the right to report without fear of persecution. But the word also means the right to report without worrying about negative reaction from advertisers and corporate publicists. It also intimates an ability to serve the public interest with having to please other parties that might offer the reporter personal benefits. 

Military clampdowns come and go, but other restrictions on media freedom, however subtle, have become permanent fixtures, practices that are detrimental to media professionalism over the long term. They do not involve strongly worded warnings read on TV by men in uniform, or defamation lawsuits launched by politicians in power to block investigative journalists. Here we are referring to the threat inherent in sweet smiles, free meals, expensive gifts and red-carpet invitations. Journalists must deal with these “flattering” obstacles to truth far more often than phone calls from the military or police or political leaders. Many journalists have been “flattered” for so long that they no longer recognise such gifts as threats to their professionalism, instead regarding them as deserved perks of the job.

Public relations agents are paid and pressured to get journalists on board when new products and promotions are launched, and they’re often paid extra if they can get a specific quota of reporters to interview their clients. 

The client might, for example, ask to have five reporters lined up, and if the PR firm can deliver that many, a certain amount of money is guaranteed – regardless of whether the reporters actually write stories, favourable or otherwise.

Junior and mid-ranking journalists go through this process frequently, some feeling awkward about it, others crossing the credibility line without realising it, and still others willingly playing corporate ball. 

The higher the journalist’s rank, the more appealing the offers and incentives become. 

In this way Thailand has fostered too many media professionals who think they enjoy freedom of the press when in fact their time is being stolen, precious time that instead could be spent exposing government or corporate shortcomings or pressing social needs. 

Such “purchased” journalists are often taunted for working for corporate perks, rather than pursuing the avocation’s nobler goals. They are content to tell the reader what their “sponsors” want them to say. Journalism is a career path strewn with ethical challenges, from Day 1 until the day the reporter retires. The media umbrella groups did right to try and protect the integrity of the profession in terms of political reporting, but that’s only half their job. 

We need to see a campaign that reminds Thai journalists that “freedom” has to exist inside as well as be enabled from without.