The Nation's Tulsathit Taptim & his poor defense of Prachatai's unethical behavior.
Tulsathit admits:
"Journalistic ethics used to be simple. Though not necessarily easy to observe, the lines were clear. You couldn’t take gifts of any kind from current or potential sponsors. You mustn’t own their stocks or play golf with their executives. You needed corporate money, in other words advertising, but you balanced that out with monetised public trust, in other words subscriptions. This way, you didn’t need to rely that much on the former, which you knew could lead to all kinds of problems."
But he claims that public money has dried up. This isn't true. Go to YouTube and you will find ENTIRE channels funded by followers through online platforms like Patreon.
The problem Prachatai has is that no one in Thailand supporters their work because their work is done not on behalf of the Thai people, but for the US State Department and the foreign corporate foundations that fund it.
Tulsathit says:
"I agree with the argument, made in defence of Prachathai, that sources of funding are not as important as what the recipients do with that funding."
If Prachatai and its supporters really believed that, why have they spent so much time concealing and lying about this funding? Why are we even having this conversation?
And we know for a fact by simply looking at Prachatai's overt bias and lies and their daily associations that their work reflects verbatim what the foreign interests funding them want them to say - mirroring Voice of America, and the compromised verified liars of Western media organizations like the BBC, CNN, AFP, AP, and Reuters - the same bunch who told us about "WMDs" in Iraq and "freedom fighters" in Libya and Syria, and the same bunch would lied about the violence of the "red shirts" in 2009-2010, and lied about militants killing PDRC protesters in 2013-2014.
If Prachatai truly served the Thai people, it would find all the support it needed IN THAILAND. It doesn't, so it can't.
Tulsathit and others like him need to be honest and admit/recognize REAL NGOs in Thailand that do not get foreign money and are truly supported by the communities they serve - proves that Prachatai's foreign funding is unethical and unacceptable.
To claim that Prachatai "has no choice" is a great disservice to legitimate NGOs and journalists in Thailand who DO NOT receive foreign funding.