FOREIGN MEDIA COVERAGE UNDER FIRE
Some international media and their reporters covering the Bangkok crisis have been accused of biased coverage on the events in the Thai capital this week.
Under particular scrutiny have been the BBC and CNN, both of whom have had their coverage labeled as favouring the red shirt anti-government protesters. A
A letter published in today's Bangkok Post is equally critical of the coverage from the BBC. The author says: "I personally saw a journalist from the BBC asking to interview people who were leaving the Ruam Rudee area; she was only interested in interviewing the people who were 'fleeing' and carrying their belongings. No interest in the people going back and forth normally. Why was she so interested in stage-managing the opinions the BBC presents?"
As a journalist myself I know that in situations like this you can only report what you see, and when opinions have been so divided you will never be able to please everyone.
From what I have seen myself I would not say the reporting has been terribly biased, however I can say for sure that a lot of it was sensationalist. Until earlier in the week I was managing to carry on my life in Bangkok without too many problems. My magazine went to print on Tuesday night and, until then, it was business as usual.
I wrote previously that much of the international media was portraying the whole of Bangkok as a battleground. That simply wasn't the case. And now that things are quickly returning to a fair degree of normality Bangkok will slip from the limelight with the damage, in so many ways, having been done.
3 comments:
please refer to
http://us.asiancorrespondent.com/bangkok-pundit-blog/is-cnn-s-coverage-really-biased
for a discussion of the claims of imbalance in CNN reporting made in this letter
Thanks David .. I was already aware of the extremely informative and ongoing discussion on the excellent Bangkok Pundit website. I appreciate your link. I should have included it in my original story.
I must now read this bangkok pundit blog. If the criticism is that the foreign press has been taking a romanticised view of the struggle of the poor for democracy then that is understandable. While the protesters are a tiny handful of the rural poor and may represent their grievances badly and in a way that diminishes their just cause, nonetheless the poor have long been excluded from a proper share of the wealth they have helped create. My own views are set out in "Bangkok Burning... Why?" on www.thaigirl2004.blogspot.com, my viewpoint being that of one who has lived in an Isaan village for seven years.
Andrew Hicks
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