No news is bad, bad news

25 jul 2005

 Sex, religion, magic, blackmail, lots of money, and lurid visuals. The tale of Naen Ae is the perfect news story of the Thaksin era.

 He used to be in the monkhood. He claims to have supernatural powers. His whole body, except the centre of his face, is etched with intricate tattoos. Women believe his magic will help them hold onto their men. Thousands have used his services, offering lots of money and their own bodies in return. He kept Viagra under his ritual throne, and secretly videotaped his sessions, perhaps for blackmail. He advertised his services in magazines and on a TV chatshow interview. His 5-rai compound has several houses, a boxing ring, and a cockfight pit. He rode around in a Benz. Neighbours told stories of women throwing bags of money over the wall.

 This is “value creation” at least as impressive as Thaksin’s claim that he can turn “paper into money”. More importantly, Naen Ae is just the latest in the string of circus acts that have marked the Thaksin era. Remember the senator and the Japanese gold in a Kanchanaburi cave? Remember Chuwit and his promise to expose the whole police hierarchy? Remember the Miss Universe extravaganza? Remember APEC?

Naen Ae might be worth a couple of inches in those newspaper sidebars offering a little light relief to the serious business of reading the news. But the Naen Ae circus has made repeated performances on press and TV for several weeks.

 The popular daily, Thai Rath, and its imitators have long been famous for their front pages palpitating with violent and lurid stories. A sub-segment of the magazine market offers readers a concentrated instalment of curiosity and gore every fortnight. But over the last four years, this genre has escaped from these well-known locations, and spread widely in the more “serious” press and the electronic media.

 Newspapers are self-censoring so much potential news and opinion that there are acres of space to be filled with something else. The nation’s newspapers may now have more international news than anywhere else in the world. The space devoted to celebrity trivia has roughly doubled. But the real boom has been in “human interest” stories.

 Often these are rather ordinary stories which editors decide are worth an extraordinary amount of room. A drunk woman who trashes a phone booth at 2 a.m. makes the news page. A student who dies falling under a bus merits ten column-inches of text. A blind vendor who falls down a drain gets a colour picture. A baby dying in a nursery makes the front page. A strip show in an army camp is a story which extends over several days with investigative reporters fearlessly interviewing army brass for their reactions.

 But very often these stories qualify for newsworthiness on one of two counts. Either they portray a truly inhuman character. Or they have an element of bizarre irrationality.

 A man is not content with abducting a 12-year-old and keeping her as his sex slave, but sends her out to work to keep him as well. Teenage thieves axe a man to death, accidentally chopping off a kid’s ear in the process, then take the kid to hospital before spending the stolen money (one thousand baht) on computer games and gambling. An insurance salesman kills himself by sealing his nose and mouth with superglue. A man stressed out by the rape of his sister kills his own father, brother, and another sister with a machete. A three-year-old is beaten to death by her stepfather. A pig farmer has her brain eaten away by maggots which got up her nose. The police decide a man found riddled with five fatal bullet wounds was a suicide. A father whips his daughter with a coathanger for getting her multiplication tables wrong. A noodle vendor presses charges against a 14-year-old boy for wasting chilli powder. A policeman shoots a traffic offender and then himself. Lottery vendors steal a winning ticket back from a customer then bargain over sharing out the prize. (All these stories appeared in the last couple of months.)

 Often the authorities are very willing accessories to this project to fill up the news space. A serial killer of sex workers is taken on a national tour to re-enact his crimes with a flock of reporters in tow.

 In the pre-Thaksin era, the general impression from the stories in the nation’s press was of a society becoming more organised, more assertive, more together. Local organizations were mushrooming. People were demanding their rights. NGOs were knitting together networks which spanned region and nation. People outside the usual chattering classes were engaging in debates on reform.

 The general impression from the press today is of a society falling apart, full of violence and bizarre irrationality.

 Television is similar. The pathetic list of government PR announcements which has come to replace the news is so short and boring that TV channels also add human interest stories. Most channels now have a regular slot highlighting the plight of the less fortunate in society. A typical story shows some individual rendered helpless, perhaps just by old age and poverty, but often by some physical disability too. This person is shown living alone, or accompanied by a child or some shattered pet animal.

 Collectively, these stories build a picture of a society incapable of helping itself. We almost never see neighbours, relatives, community organisations, or NGOs in these clips. We can’t tell whether they are really absent, or whether this is just part of the genre.

 The press and electronic media are now reflecting the image of a society which is dysfunctional, incapable of getting itself together, and in need of the paternal care which can only be provided by people in positions of authority.

 This is the subtle side of authoritarianism. When the government passes an emergency decree which shreds the constitution, people welcome it in part because they have been softened up by a daily drip-feed of bad news.