The "i" in iTV stands for "independent".

Shin Corp - the telecom conglomerate founded by Thaksin Shinawatra and sold by his family to Temasek Holdings of Singapore earlier this year - is iTV's major shareholder, with a 53-per-cent stake. Shin is expected to appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court.

If upheld, the decision will compel iTV to revert to the original annual concession-fee rate of 44 per cent of revenues or Bt1 billion per year, whichever is greater, to the Office of the Permanent Secretary of the Prime Minister's Office, the concession owner. Since the arbitration committee ruled in favour of iTV two years ago, the television network has been paying only 6.5 per cent of revenues or a minimum of Bt230 million.

Significantly, the Central Administrative Court also voided the arbitration committee's decision to ease the programming requirements under the concession contract, to allow iTV to adjust its news/entertainment programme ratio to 50:50, from the original 70:30. On both counts, the court reasoned that the arbitration committee had overstepped its authority in their rulings in favour of iTV.

iTV had earlier asked the Office of the Permanent Secretary for compensation, claiming that the government had unfairly set too high a concession fee, compared with pre-existing deals that some other agencies had made with their concessionaires. iTV, which at the time was still owned by Thaksin's family through their controlling stake in Shin Corp, asked the arbitration committee to settle the dispute and won. As a result of the committee's ruling allowing it to slash the concession fee from January 30, 2004, iTV's financial standing has improved dramatically.

It is worth noting that for a time, the Office of the Permanent Secretary, which is directly under Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was reluctant to challenge the arbitration panel's decision. The office eventually decided to ask the Administrative Court to rule on the legality of the decision, under pressure from media-freedom advocates.

The Office of the Permanent Secretary awarded a 30-year concession to iTV in 1995 as part of pre-Thaksin broadcast media reform. This was meant to ensure that broadcast journalists enjoyed unfettered freedom to do their job, so that the public's right to access timely, accurate and truthful news and information could be better guaranteed.

The iTV initiative was made by the government of then-prime minister Anand Panyarachun in the aftermath of the bloody 1992 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. The idea was to break the government's monopoly on the broadcast media, which has traditionally been used for propaganda. Between 1995 and 2000, iTV, then jointly owned and operated by a consortium of media operators and investors, including the Nation Multimedia Group, which owns this newspaper, had enjoyed unprecedented journalistic freedom.

That was until Shin Corp bought into iTV shortly before the 2001 election that put Thaksin in power. And the rest was history. By late 2001, Shin, which by then had become iTV's major shareholder, had purged the newsroom of independent-minded journalists. Ever since, iTV has been widely perceived to be a propaganda tool of the Thaksin government, just like all the other television and radio stations.

The Central Administrative Court's ruling is much more than a skewed business-dispute settlement. It has wide implications, not only for the future of iTV as a business entity, but also for the much wider public interest in broadcast media freedom. Let's not forget that media freedom is a main pillar of any vibrant democracy. The return of iTV to being a free and independent news network serving its intended purpose should feature prominently in the minds of those promoting political reforms.