Broadcasting bill 'excludes public'

Eighteen organisations representing a broad range of media professionals, academics, consumer-rights activists and press associations have sent out a strong signal that they oppose the bill, which was approved by the Cabinet on June 10.

The bill is scheduled for debate in Parliament today and is expected to be law before the end of this year.

The 18 organisations have argued that the bill has been drafted without public participation, although it will have a far-reaching impact on the broadcast industry worth several hundreds of billions of baht.

More importantly, they said the National Broadcasting Commission, an independent agency set up to regulate the broadcast industry and allocate frequencies, would not be independent as the Cabinet would reserve the right to hand-pick members.

Initially, the Senate was supposed to confirm the appointment of members.

The bill also removes the right of the public to own at least 20 per cent of the frequencies and opens the way for community radio to become profit-oriented under the control of local administration organisations.

Today, representatives of the organisations will head to Parliament to hand a letter to House Speaker Chai Chidchob, detailing their opposition. They will also try to rally support from academics and journalists nationwide to block passage of the bill.

In its June 16 report, SCB Securities also said this version of the bill could weaken private telecommunications firms' bargaining power.

"Major changes include shutting the public out from participation and giving full authority to the ICT minister to select the commissioners from a pool of candidates from a limited number of organisations," the broker said.

"This raises concerns that the NBC will not be independent or free of Cabinet influence, and thus less apt to act in the interest of consumers. This move also weakens the bargaining leverage of private operators as it would result in a regulator that acts in the state's interest and thus could take control of operators' pricing or regulatory-fee structure."