Broadcasting and Democracy

OPINION / BROADCASTING AND DEMOCRACY

Whose television and for what?

Television in Thailand has acted largely as a tool to produce a culture that will sustain a reigning political order

By BOONRAK BOONYAKETMALA

On Tuesday, Thailand Independent Television (TITV) was abruptly seized by the Public Relations Department of the Prime Minister's Office, so as to complete the transfer of its control to the so-called Thai Public Broadcasting Service (TPBS), a creation of the fast-tracked Public Television Act sponsored by the government installed by the military coup.

Whilst this was a tear-jerking event for some 840 TITV staffers, the newfound annual budget of 1,700 million baht earmarked by the government for TPBS could be a gold mine for any organisation empowered to define its own identity and operations.

But a really good question for research is whether or not the appalling quality of television in this country has much to do with the availability of free-floating money. Given all the shortcomings of Thai television production culture and system, not to mention the attached political strings of fundraisers, the advent of a worthwhile, defendable public service in this domain in an age of deep domestic conflict and global turbulence is a real challenge indeed.

That TITV itself was put in place only months earlier is a testimony of the obvious policy confusion of the same regime. The fact that TITV was created from iTV, owned in the first half of the 2000s by Shin Corp and then Temasek Group, respectively, is quite telling of the impact of political changes on the making and unmaking of this TV network.

Furthermore, if one was to be reminded that this very iTV emerged originally from the people's struggle against military dictatorship in the early 1990s, the correlation between politics and television in Thailand becomes even more pronounced.

With TPBS in place, the musical chairs of television politicking has finally completed its vicious circle.

First, civil society took control over the direction of iTV by defining its structure and mandate, characterised by content regulation and diversified ownership.

Later, big capital, initially national and later transnational, took turns running iTV. Subsequently, the bureaucratic polity seized the day by transforming iTV into TITV and then TPBS, each with its own political implications.

The case of iTV is but a fraction of the politics of Thailand's television industry, whose components mirror the multi-layered contradictions of the political system that breeds it. Throughout this country's modern history, the development of the Thai TV industry has been synchronised with the whims of dominant political forces of the day. During the last five decades, the powers-that-be of any period struggled to own and/or operate TV networks in Thailand. This is hardly surprising since in modern times television has turned out to be the most powerful means of mass communication to position ideas, facts, products and services in the market. On top of the big money to be spun, it is a motor for generating influence, power and status, all of which are rare social commodities not easily accessible.

Beginning in the 1950s when military rule was the norm, the Royal Thai Army launched Channel 5. A little later, Channel 3 and 7 came into being under the control of old-time private capital with intricate connections to the bureaucracy. Simultaneously, while Channel 9 and 11 were both started as mechanisms controlled by the Prime Minister's Office, Channel 9 was turned into a company listed on the stock market in the 2000s, a process a la Thaksinocracy.

Like iTV, any adjustment in the structure and mandate of such TV networks has been a response to pressures of dominant power cliques. To maintain the status quo, there is always some room for other emerging groups. For example, peripheral television networks like cable and satellite channels as diverse as TrueVisions, Nation, ASTV and others are in existence.

Owing to such vested interests, it is an established norm that the TV industry of Thailand has not really been part and parcel of a free media system. Whenever TV dares to be free, it is always driven by the individuals who are exceptions rather than the rule. Overall, television in Thailand has acted largely as a tool to produce a culture that will sustain a reigning political order. For this reason, television does not raise questions that will challenge the political forces that watch over it.

The role of television as an engine of democracy is therefore curtailed. For instance, though the plight of large peripheral groups such as peasants and manual labourers does appear in the news from time to time, their stories are almost never taken seriously in a sustained manner with a view to truly understand their problems. If Thailand's TV is to better serve the cause of democracy, it could begin by breaking new ground in this class-bounded territory.

As both the producers and consumers of TV software have learned to live with such limited standards, the level of professionalism in television has never been high in the area of news.

A case in point was when the tsunami hit southern Thailand in December 2004. None of the television networks in Thailand was able to cover the news in any timely manner. And when some footage did finally appear on the screens, they were literally taken from global networks such as CNN and BBC. Once the news crews of local TV channels made their show, much of their footage and narrative focused on the tragic dimensions to such an extent as to set examples of textbook cases for bad taste in journalism.

On top of such weaknesses in breaking news, routine, day-to-day TV journalism is not any better. Ironically, with its much greater financial resources, much of the news on TV is more often than not exactly the same as those you can read in the printed newspapers. It is arguable that the latter form of journalism has usually set the agenda for TV news. Actually, most TV networks show the daily newspapers as the core of their news programmes, without any apparent sense of guilt. Moreover, ''edutainment'' is producing the worse impact on news programmes on Thai TV. For instance, many networks have apparently commissioned people who enjoy posing as celebrities to ''read'' the news, a trend which has triggered a vulgarisation of the news profession to the point of no return.

Aside from plain common sense, news analysis programmes that offer bright, in-depth views about the issues in question have been very rare. Worse, much of the ''hard talk'' programmes on TV have been conducted in the main by tongue-in-cheek moderators with little understanding of the chosen topics of discussion. Despite its great potential as a means to disseminate complicated ideas audio-visually, TV has not been sufficiently utilised to stimulate the exchange of serious thought.

On top of such limitations, TV in Thailand has not given adequate weight to foreign news, except those having to do with sports. In a world as inter-dependent as ours, a solid presentation and analysis of select foreign news, especially those with strategic relevance to Thai life, is a key area which must command more attention from responsible TV policy-makers. Ideally, the foreign desk of Thai TV networks must be able to produce its own foreign news, rather than simply copying from those produced by foreign newsmen, as has been the main practice. Nevertheless, taking expensive trips abroad just to cover some news in person but with little background knowledge of the issue at hand is definitely not the way forward.

A textbook example in this context is when a Thai TV reporter tried to do a stint on Iraq but openly admitted that he could not pronounce names in the news properly ''because they are difficult to remember''.

Another aspect of TV news that requires immediate attention is the steady decrease in intra-media competition, as news personnel of many TV networks are actually drawn from the same pool, probably a clue that these people prefer being treated as celebrities rather than as newsmen.

Alienating the well-educated members of the audience as it does, much of what is on TV in Thailand is designed to please the masses. Note that there are probably over 15 million active TV sets for our 63 million people, well over half of which are based in the rural areas. After all, the rule of thumb is the more audiences watch a given programme, the more advertising revenues it can attract. Thailand's TV thus ends up highlighting locally-made melodramas about women fighting for rich and handsome men, game shows focusing on financial rewards, foreign tour programmes that are designed to tell more about their moderators than the areas visited, talk shows involving silly details in the lives of the rich and famous, comedies about poor folk trying to adjust awkwardly to the modern lifestyle, ''hard talk'' that is meant to add value to the status to the talkers without having talked about anything hard, and the like.

Coupled with the so-called ''news,'' such pop culture on TV has cleverly served to seduce the masses into a political system in which they are meant to be co-opted as ritualistic partners. But, alas, the subversive impact of TV's messages on the masses will keep producing a range of unforeseen, boomerang effects on the political system that manipulates it. An intense pump-up of consumerism by TV has already destroyed the fabric of rural societies, whose members have steadily invaded Bangkok and other urban centres looking for the televised lifestyles. As proven in recent elections, these people will vote for political candidates who claim to cater to their needs, basic and otherwise. Ultimately, albeit unintentionally, television will generate democracy from below.

The writer teaches at Thammasat University in Bangkok. Comments are welcome at: : responses1234@yahoo.com.

Source : Bangkokpost,Friday January 18, 2008