Fuck Crown Prince Maha of Thailand (and fuck the media too)

[dafoomie]

Some Australian dude was sentenced to 3 years for insulting the Crown Prince of Thailand, but thats not the interesting part. Our media refuses to report what the insult actually was.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/01/19/thai.jail/

Here's the passage that nobody has the balls to report (that I actually had to look up myself).

From King Rama to the Crown Prince, the nobility was renowned for their romantic entanglements and intrigues. The Crown Prince had many wives - major and minor - with a coterie of concubines for entertainment. One of his recent wives was exiled with her entire family, including a son they conceived together, for an undisclosed indiscretion. He subsequently remarried with another woman and fathered another child. It was rumoured that if the prince fell in love with one of his minor wives and she betrayed him, she and her family would disappear with their name, familial lineage and all vestiges of their existence expunged forever.

What good is having a free and open society when our media will kowtow to any and all foreign governments that silence speech and dissent?

[Sarang01]

Ugh that's really despicable.

[dwhelan]

While I agree that this seems ridiculous from my perspective, CNN has a responsibility to their correspondence located in Thailand. If they printed the offending remark, they would be opening those people to local litigation. Which is what they said in the article, what would you have them do?

[dafoomie]

They aren't the only outlet who won't report it, I haven't found any who even allude to it.

If the entire CNN corporation can not report this story for fear of unrelated journalists in Thailand who work for them being prosecuted, then CNN is compromised and can not objectively report on that country.

What they're afraid of is that Thailand will blacklist their site as China does, thats the real reason.

[dropbearGSH]

This is the same country where child prostitutes are commonplace.

[dwhelan]

They aren't the only outlet who won't report it, I haven't found any who even allude to it.

If the entire CNN corporation can not report this story for fear of unrelated journalists in Thailand who work for them being prosecuted, then CNN is compromised and can not objectively report on that country.

What they're afraid of is that Thailand will blacklist their site as China does, thats the real reason.

And I would completely agree, if they had suppressed the story, but they did not. They did report the story, they did report the relevant facts to the story. Now if they were running a story, "How to piss off the royalty of Thailand and get yourself a jail sentence of 3 to 15 years", then omitting the offending piece would cripple the story.

As for CNN, or any other business, not wanting to destroy an operating model, in the ideal world they would run everything, but that is not reality. They have to make decisions if something is worth the risk, and by omitting the offending piece, they did not lose the story, so they went with it.

Also this story was not an AP story, these were CNN correspondences that took part in the story, so members of their press corp would be at risk.

[camoor]

And I would completely agree, if they had suppressed the story, but they did not. They did report the story, they did report the relevant facts to the story. Now if they were running a story, "How to piss off the royalty of Thailand and get yourself a jail sentence of 3 to 15 years", then omitting the offending piece would cripple the story.

As for CNN, or any other business, not wanting to destroy an operating model, in the ideal world they would run everything, but that is not reality. They have to make decisions if something is worth the risk, and by omitting the offending piece, they did not lose the story, so they went with it.

Also this story was not an AP story, these were CNN correspondences that took part in the story, so members of their press corp would be at risk.

I tend to agree. If the insult was political in nature (for example if he was jailed for saying the King was too close with Bush W.) then I would agree with the OP. But the insult was more salacious and ultimately irrelevant to the real point which is that journalists can be jailed in Thailand for doing their job. In a country like Thailand news orgs need to pick their battles, and I would rather have them save their trump card for a juicier story.

[dafoomie]

And I would completely agree, if they had suppressed the story, but they did not. They did report the story, they did report the relevant facts to the story. Now if they were running a story, "How to piss off the royalty of Thailand and get yourself a jail sentence of 3 to 15 years", then omitting the offending piece would cripple the story.

As for CNN, or any other business, not wanting to destroy an operating model, in the ideal world they would run everything, but that is not reality. They have to make decisions if something is worth the risk, and by omitting the offending piece, they did not lose the story, so they went with it.

Also this story was not an AP story, these were CNN correspondences that took part in the story, so members of their press corp would be at risk.
You keep making the case for CNN when my point is that no news network will tell you what exactly he wrote that got him jailed. When you omit pertinent information for monetary reasons, you are no longer a reputable news organization. It changes the nature of the story. Tell me if you see a difference between:

Australian jailed for insulting the royal family.
Australian jailed for alleging the royal family has people disappeared.

[dwhelan]

You keep making the case for CNN when my point is that no news network will tell you what exactly he wrote that got him jailed. When you omit pertinent information for monetary reasons, you are no longer a reputable news organization. It changes the nature of the story. Tell me if you see a difference between:

Australian jailed for insulting the royal family.
Australian jailed for alleging the royal family has people disappeared.

I agree with your ideals, but they are not reality, nor is your example. All newspaper have to make decisions when deal with other countries and their laws. CNN, the BBC, the Times, the New York Times, and Reuters (to name a few) all have direct correspondents that could be in danger, if they included the offending statement, in their article. As would the Associated Press's personnel, if it's partners edited the original AP article to include the offending language.

Also, the actually language is not important, it is a tertiary detail, because the story is not about how the Thai justice system came to the decision to arrest and convict the author, it is about the results of that conviction. It is about the author and how he now faces three years of jail time, for a law we do not feel is right.

Finally your example is misleading, if you want something more appropriate try

Australian author, living in Thailand, jailed for insulting the royal family.
Australian author, living in Thailand, jailed for authoring book that contains rumors implicating the royal family as part of plot to make undesirable people disappear.

[depascal22]

Wait a minute. CNN should risk their own correspondents lives and freedom just to report a story that means absolutely nothing to the common American?

Fuck the Thai king but how does it affect us here? Will the Thais become so emboldened that they start invading the rest of Southeast Asia because CNN chose not to report the story?

Should we invade Thailand to bring them democracy? What do you propose that we do? If you feel so strongly about this, go picket the Thai Embassy in Washington, DC or the consulate in Los Angeles.

[fatherofcaitlyn]

If we could get Obama on board, perhaps he could pass a law prohibiting sexual relations between American Congresspeople and Thai tweens until the author is freed.