Red media thriving, despite govt crackdown

Less than a month after the raid on their office, the pro-Thaksin red-shirt leaders have already launched a new satellite channel, People Channel, to replace the suppressed D Station. People Channel is under the same operators, with Adisorn Piengket as president. Also, the symbolic programme of the red-shirt movement, Truth Today, is one of its programmes.

As well as the pro red-shirt movement's TV channel, most pro-red-shirt community radio stations are also transmitting again. Four stations in Bangkok, except FM 94.75, have already resumed transmission with the same programmes and producers. Also, most pro-red-shirt community radio stations in the provinces are back on air. Resuming transmission by the suppressed radio stations has been easy: just use another transmitter instead of the confiscated ones.

As the red-shirt media springs back almost immediately after the shut down, the government's suppression seems to have been a failed tactic. And even worse, the suppression led the Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship (DAAD) to launch a red-shirt weekly newspaper entitled Red News .

Somyos Phruksakasemsuk, Red News editor and a DAAD leader, said the alliance initiated the paper because most red-shirt media had been shut down after the emergency decree. And although most had returned to broadcasting, many media outlets published by the mainstream media were still biased against the red-shirt movement, he said.

The main objective of Red News, Somyos said, was to present a different 'truth' from the mainstream media and to advocate the red-shirt movement. He claimed 20,000 copies of Red News were sold out in only two hours on the first day, indicating the public was fed up with the mainstream media and wanted a different view.

Partly agreeing with Somyos, Chulalongkorn journalism lecturer Panpimon Naknawa said the rise of the red-media reflected something wrong in the information disseminated by the mainstream media.

"The mainstream media presented the red-shirt movement in a particular way only, lacking some dimensions," Panpimon said. "Not surprisingly, the red-shirts have had to create their own media to present those absent dimensions."

Moreover, having a media outlet among the red-shirts created a good chance for society, [allowing] people to learn how to manage the variety of information by themselves, Panpimon said.

Supinya Klangnarong, a media-rights activist, said political media was not a new phenomenon in Thailand. The creation of the red-shirt media was a mirror to the beginning of yellow-shirt media. With the sense of being a minority and the government's opposition, they had to make space to voice their opinions, she said.

The difference between red-shirt media and yellow-shirt media, Supinya said, was in the means of suppression administered by the government.

"The suppression of red-shirt media by the Abhisit-led government was no different from the suppression of the yellow-shirt media by the Thaksin-led government in 2006. However, the means of suppression differed as the Abhisit government used the law to shut down the media, while the Thaksin government used defamation suits [to attack the media professionals]," she said.