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Published on March 18, 2008

It is an outright injustice that former human rights commissioner Jaran Ditta-apichai would suggest that "deepening bias for or against Thaksin means that some pro-Thaksin demonstrations will be reported by anti-Thaksin media, such as ASTV, as having less people in attendance than is actually the case". Has Jaran conveniently forgotten, or does he think that the public has forgotten the biased and suppressed state of the media under Thaksin's authoritarian rule?

The clearest example of television bias under Thaksin's tight grasp was in February 2006, when there were some 50,000 protesters who had gathered early in the evening at Sanam Luang, covering half the 68-rai area. I was watching iTV that night simultaneously with ASTV. ASTV cameras panned over the whole area, allowing the limited number of ASTV viewers to see the tens of thousands of protesters there. It was unsettling to see iTV's coverage, which reached most of the population, which showed instead very limited footage that only concentrated on a small area where the protesters were sparse. iTV journalists had the gall to report that there were only 6,000 protesters. It was difficult to fathom such an incredible insult to journalistic reporting at first, but it was even more frightening to realise that the television and radio media at that point were directly under the hands of a very authoritarian Thaksin and iTV's reporters knowingly made false reports.

Earlier this year, the Human Rights Watch released a report in which Thailand was listed as a country where authoritarian rulers were violating human rights and getting away with it because its leaders were falsely projecting themselves as democratic. We all remember the ways that Thaksin got us on this list - leading an authoritarian government and filling his own pockets and those of cronies, meanwhile crying out democracy to the West and using television and radio outlets, most of which he owned, to his direct advantage.

The international community should not be tricked into believing that Thaksin has washed his hands of politics. (Looking at the Cabinet line-up should make this especially clear). Rather he had and has been using a lot of money to hire political lobbyist firms in order to control the media's perception of Thailand in the US and around the world and obviously to buy lots and lots of people at any expense.

It is another sad day when Jaran, once a human-rights commissioner for Thailand, would give the clear impression of having chosen to take the path to polarise his own countrymen and cry out "media wolf" to the international community just to set the path for Thaksin's political white-wash mission, which is currently in progress.

Carolyn

Bangkok

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Obama's choice of spiritual guide a cause for concern

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, fiery former pastor of Barack Obama's church and recent adviser to the Obama campaign, is a giant-killer.

 The giant he's conquered is the outsized myth that Obama is somehow the first "post-racial" presidential candidate and the one who would "unite" Americans. Whether the rest of us would ever wish to be united with haters such as the Reverend Wright and his congregation is a prime question.

Juxtapose, for instance, Obama's post-racial uniter pose with the Reverend Wright's 2007 Christmas Day lashing of white America from his pulpit before a wildly enthusiastic congregation which included Senator Obama himself, and you witness a vastly troubling dichotomy only the eyeless could miss. Twenty years of such Sunday-sermon venom is what Barack and Michelle Obama freely chose to expose themselves and their young daughters to: what does that tell us about the Obamas?

 And where are the mainstream news media salvoes which would savage any other candidate choosing to follow a pastor of such provocative mien and who as recently as 2006 donated thousands to further such a ministry? Is media objectivity truly at post-racial status?

 A mainstream media willing only to strew flowers in Barack Obama's path has here ended up the Reverend Wright's most deserving victim.

Ron Goodden

Atlanta, Georgia

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