It was not a Thaksin-style "those who said so don't know a damn thing" response. To be fair, Surayud at the same time mentioned the media's constructive role. "[The criticism] is within the scope of the checks and balances principle," he said. "Whatever mistakes the government has made deserve warnings, so we can correct them. We are ready to listen." According to him, the media should do more to restore social and political harmony and be more careful in presenting "negative" views of events.

Compared with Thaksin Shinawatra's well-known mindset that any journalist attacking him was unpatriotic, Surayud's comments could be considered top class. And we can't deny that the coup-makers and the interim government have tried hard to keep an atmosphere of press freedom. There have been no threats to journalists or columnists, and interference with the print media or attempts to control it has been unheard of, although there were reports of censorship on the broadcast media. Freedom of expression - or the attitude towards it - is one area where the new leadership can differentiate itself from the overthrown regime, at least for now.

But Prawase's good-news bad-news analysis was dead wrong and Surayud must not believe him. Contrary to what Prawase said, the Thai media are hungry for good news nowadays, especially political. In fact, the coup-makers and the new government have been given a big break by the Thai press. That they bitterly "accepted" the coup alone - something that the international community struggles to understand even today - should be the best possible news for the Surayud government and the Council for National Security (CNS).

For all their "limitations" as well as the need to be prudent, the powers that be must also put themselves in society's shoes. The political turbulence and the abrupt turnaround have made people worried, anxious and confused. Many people are still unsure whether it's right to support or condone the September 19 coup. While two months can be a short time to uncover or prove all the bad things that happened over the past five years, the CNS and Surayud have to understand the eroding patience and the media's duty to report the sentiment.

Have we lost "democracy", as the West is saying? When will we actually get it back? Is this "break" from democracy really worth it? What's being done apart from announcing what a lot of people already knew - that Thaksin and his family should have been taxed? What else is going on apart from the quick move to get government approval on salaries for the CNS members? If the ousted government was one of the most corrupt in history, why didn't the coup-makers freeze its members' assets to facilitate the investigation? These are among the questions that even hard-core supporters of the unconventional ouster of an elected prime minister are asking every day.

It was a free media that helped expose Thaksin. In those days he too complained about overwhelming "negativity" in political news reports. He also called for the press to make a "constructive" contribution to the country. While Thaksin did it in quite a rude way, the core message might not be that different from Surayud's.

The current divisiveness in our country is very worrisome, and Surayud's call for harmony and media caution is understandable. The bottom line, however, is that without an active watchdog obsessed with looking for the negative, Thaksin would have still been Thailand's leader today and it would have been him heading off to the Apec meeting in Hanoi instead of Surayud. What Prawase described as an obsession with negativity has another name. It's called checks and balances - something the coup-makers insisted was largely absent during the Thaksin era.