WHAT OPTIONS FOR THE ECONOMIST?
Managers at The Economist must be fuming, although secretly they might also be reveling in the spotlight that surrounds the non distribution of their weekly magazine in Thailand for the second week running and for the third time inside three months.
In theory there's nothing stopping them mailing copies to their paid subscribers directly from outside Thailand. I believe that was happening anyway until recent weeks. Getting copies to subscribers has to be their number one priority, ahead of getting copies into the shops which is far more complicated.
In the current situation it will be impossible to find a distributor in Thailand that is prepared to risk any kind of action for distributing sensitive material. And the same is true for sales outlets who will not want to sell anything that risks offending the Thai royal family.
2 comments:
I understand that subscriber copies of The Economist are mailed into Thailand from Singapore. This would seem to be beyong the reach of Thai law but nonetheless I believe that the issues witheld have not been mailed to subscribers, presumably so as to reduce any offence given by the articles concerned.
Hi Andrew, thanks for your comment.
Yes, in recent weeks subscriber copies had been emailed directly from Singapore. Prior to that all copies were shipping into Thailand and distributed from one central location to both subscribers and retail outlets.
So basically what The Economist saying about the distributor refusing to handle the editions only applies to the shop copies. They could, if they so wish, continue to main copies from outside the Kingdom.
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