Reportage of the Thai situation routinely tends to miss its key elements:
The King is no longer universally revered - anti-royalist speeches are now made in the northeast. (This is a huge change.)
The royal family itself is badly split along yellow-red lines.
The King and Queen are both elderly and have suffered extensive brain damage from their illnesses of recent years. They are not running this show to any great extent any more - though are used by the yellowshirts.
Thailand has always been run by its elite business families. The King is their figurehead, but they (not he) have always been in the driver's seat.
The Thaksin family now being protested against is more or less the new, younger elite - basically a faction of the elite which is seeking greater sway. This is an intra-elite struggle.
The redshirts have a large hinterland of popular support which is useful at election time, but they have largely been used by the Thaksin faction of the elite. They have never been allowed much direct power, notwithstanding their numbers.
Thailand's press censorship is among the world's most draconian, so none of the above is much understood inside Thailand.
Because they would lose their working visas (or worse) if they reported the true situation in Bangkok, Western foreign correspondents self-censor. Thus the outside world hears little more of the real situation than the Thais do.