THE ECONOMIST: IT'S NOT BEEN BANNED
My contacts in the industry have told me there's no formal ban on sales of The Economist in Thailand this week.
What's happened, as happened back in 2002 with a similarly controvertial story, is the distributor decided not to handle this issue. One long time industry insider told me yesterday that copies did arrive in the country but have since been returned.
Distri-Thai, which is part of the same group as Asia Books and Bookazine, handles the vast majority of imported English language magazines that appear in shops throughout Thailand. A senior manager at Asia Books confirmed she was aware of the non-appearance of the magazine this week, and that managers had been told the reasons why.
Despite a number of emails I've not had any formal contact with the distribution or circulation departments at The Economist, which likely due to a public holiday in Singapore yesterday. Their initial explanation regarding a logistics problem is true. It's a problem when your distributor refuses to handle your magazine!
It's also true that copies of last week's edition of The Economist made it here to the shops, and that current editions of Time, Newsweek and BusinessWeek have all made it here - from Europe in the case of the latter magazine.
The Straits Times, via Reuters, has a story about this issue. The headline 'Thailand 'bans' Economist" is entirely misleading because the second paragraph of the story says no one in authority is aware of any formal banning. Bangkok Pundit, as always, has his/her finger on the pulse and has a blog posting here.
I wonder if any of the Thai media will pick up the Reuters story and run it?
3 comments:
That's why the Straits Times headline put "bans" into quotation marks.
Not at all misleading. If really banned there'd be no quotation marks.
But there's no ban, Dan.
The 'ban' mention in the headline relates to the comment in the story from the Asia Books salesperson, however even the spokenperson for the same company denies any ban is in place.
A 'Thailand denies banning The Economist' headline would be more accurate and a true reflection of what the entire article goes on to discover.
Thanks, as always, for your comments. I really appreciate them.
This Reuters sentence explains the "ban" - a voluntary ban:
'This is one of those "cultural harmony" bans, where the book distributors and stores take it on themselves not to distribute,' Mr Hinke said.
This kind of voluntary censorship by the media was quite common under Thaksin. Now it's the distributors ... Same same but different.
Cheers Andrew! - D.
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