Why Freedom of the Press does not work in Thailand?

Freedom of the Press has been the issue that people in the society put it into the top of today. Free television channels that you watch in Thailand, most of them have been controlled by the government. How the governments control them? Here is the background.

Starting with NBT (National Broadcasting Television) or formerly Channel 11, fully controlled by the government. This channel was found with the reason that government can be able to present their works to the public via this channel. Unfortunately, government from time to time use this channel as their advertising place and encourage the news department to present news that support whatever the government did.

Channel 9 was formally the Mass Communication Organization of Thailand (MCOT). This channel has been splitting out from government in 90’s and uses the new logo and presents it as “Modern Nine TV” and changes its organization at the cooperation. Unfortunately, the majority shares of this cooperation owned by the government. Therefore, government can still be able to control this channel. Channel 3 is also the subsidy of MCOT that allow private company to provide its contents.

Channel 5 is the military owned channel, provide information from the military side and the development from the military.


The newest channel that just born is Thai PBS, with the principle from the previous government lead by General Surayud Chulanon wanted this channel to provide the news and knowledge without commercial. Thai PBS received sin-tax from government to produce the contents and hire private companies to provide contents to the channel. I have been monitoring these six channels for years and I can tell that none of them provide the news that honest to the government. Thai PBS sometimes invited academicians that tell the truth of what government has done to the country, but still not being honest enough, unlike the BBC, the original public television channel that seems to be honest to its government more than Thai PBS.

With these reasons above, many middle class people who have money to afford cable TV service are likely to watch news from cable TV channels, such as Nation Channel, TNN and ASTV, only three 24 hours news channels in Thailand.