Holding The Press

WHEN SUTHICHAI YOON left Thailand last September and came to Harvard as a Nieman Fellow, the 32-year-old magazine editor of Bangkok's Nation Review had spent a decade playing a game with which few American journalists are even familiar--the game of controlled press.

In a nation where papers are regularly closed down and all other forms of media are government owned, Yoon and newspapermen like him tread a continual tightrope between their desire to maintain journalistic integrity and their need to avoid government wrath. It is a path which at times becomes exceedingly risky.

Sitting in the cushioned and carpeted library of the Nieman Foundation, surrounded by less restricted publications like The London Times and The Washington Post, Yoon recalls whispered threats, censored stories, and the tales of reporters who spent eight to ten years in jail for visiting China.

He says it was not always like this. For nearly 30 years after the 1932 establishment of the country's constitutional monarchy, Thai journalists remained quiescent, supporting whichever military regime controlled the government and considering few controversial issues. In the late '60s, however, Yoon and a few of his friends left the entrenched English-language newspaper, The Bangkok Post, and started a new type of paper, emphasizing more interpretative stories, more investigative reporting, and bolder editorials.

"In Thailand it is difficult to look at journalism as a detached career... Journalism in the Third World means you have a lot of involvement in what you write about. You are always advocating a cause."

"Perhaps we were so enthusiastic because censorship was so strong under the military government in the '60s," Yoon says. "We thought journalism was the main opportunity to make changes in the society, to provoke people to thinking about things they took for granted. We managed to start a new trend in journalism, putting out politically serious newspapers instead of the popular sensationalistic publications that abounded."

This new type of journalism has been coldly received by the Thai government. The country averages one coup every two years and with each new regime come new sanctions and restrictions on the media.

At one time officials were sent to all newspaper offices as soon as the papers came off the press. Those stories the government found subversive were painted over with black ink.

Since then the government has resorted to subtler methods. During the 1976 coup when police raided the capital's university, killing 50 to 60 students and arresting 3000 others, the regime imposed a total news blackout, closing all papers for three days. But, having no control over magazines like Time and Newsweek, which were published outside the country, they hired students and unemployed persons to tear the pages on Thailand out of thousands of periodicals before the publications were put on the newsstands.

TODAY CENSORSHIP is not as blatant. But the Revolutionary Party's decree No. 42, which empowers the government to close down papers with no legal recourse, and the all-embracing Anti-Communist law, remain ominous threats. "With no pre-publication censorship, editors play a dangerous game," Yoon says. "You take a gamble every time you go to press. You go as close to the truth as you dare, but you never know when you'll be shut down for something that appears in the morning paper."

Of course Thai journalists have developed a number of tricks for outsmarting the censors. Leaning forward slightly in his chair, a flicker of a smile on his face, Yoon spills a few trade secrets. "Papers are not allowed to print pictures of dead bodies which the government claims would create nauseating feelings," he says. "We get around that one by captioning the pictures 'mortally wounded' or 'taken minutes before death.' Thai police don't read English too well." When Thai troops were sent into Laos to fight with Americans, the government forbade any articles on the bilateral affair. The Nation Review reported that the government had denied sending troops into Laos. "That pleased the government, and of course everyone else knew what was going on," Yoon grins.

The paper and others like it have not always been this lucky. After the 1976 coup, the Nation Review was closed down for more than a month, and its executive editor was arrested. Yoon was accused of being part of an anti-government conspiracy. Still such threats to individuals have not deterred the men in Yoon's circles. "In Thailand it is difficult to look at journalism as a detached career," he says. "Journalism in the Third World means you have a lot of involvement in what you write about. You are always advocating a cause."

Probably the biggest problem facing journalism in Thailand today is the estrangement of the young. After the demonstrations and shootings of 1976, about 3000 students left for the jungle to join the Communist Party. "It was not so much that they were pro-Communist as that they were afraid of being liquidated. Because of the series of military takeovers which shut down newspapers, they were disillusioned with the constructive role of the press in changing society for the better," Yoon explains. A whole generation of new brains left the city, left the country, left the system."

"TO BE ABLE TO KEEP up an oppressive system you have to plug up the loopholes," Aggrey Klaaste, Nieman Fellow says. As news editor of one of South Africa's three Black papers, the Johannesburg Post, Klaaste's job is finding the holes the government hasn't closed. With the barrage of legislation restricting press freedom, it is a difficult and dangerous assignment. For Klaaste it has also become a mission.

In South Africa, quite simply, two kinds of news exist: pro-and anti-government. The five dailies and six weeklies published in Afrikaanin--the language of the white rule--are the voices of the Nationalist Party, the minority which gained control of the government in 1948 and instituted apartheid. The country also has 16 English-language dailies and 15 weeklies, two Black publications in English, and one in Zulu. With one exception, these papers are anti-government.

"Most papers belong to the opposition front. Most are activist," Klaaste says. "You can't even talk about objectivity." Faced with an oppressive system of apartheid, based on the belief that Divine Will sanctions rule by 13 per cent of the nation's inhabitants, and supported by a battery of more than 20 laws controlling journalism, few papers even try. Instead reporters take every opportunity to expose government corruption and denounce apartheid, often going to prison themselves for their actions.

For the Black papers, this outspoken criticism is a fairly recent development. "Before the '70s, Black newspapers were mostly sensationalistic and apologetic in tone to the establishment," Kaaste explains. Then the independence of Mazambique and the defeat of South Africa in Angola activated Blacks politically. "Our papers began to assume a different tone. They became an articulation of Black aspirations," the journalist adds.

The Soweto riots of 1976 increased the importance of Black papers, drew Black political leaders and the papers closer together, and brought the press coverage world-wide attention. "With the riots of '76, Black reporters came into real prominence. The police shootings, the demonstrations, the arrests, all these happened where Black reporters lived. White reporters couldn't even go into those areas because they'd have been killed. We gained a hell of a lot of respect," Klaaste says.

However, the new image Black journalists gained among world reporters and their own leaders only increased the difficulties under which they and their white English-speaking counterparts labor. Today a Defense Act prevents reporters from writing anything pertaining to the military without permission from the Commissioner of Defense. An inquest act forbids stories containing anything except the verdict of an inquest, and a Prison Act regulates reports on prisons, prisoners and prison life.

BUT THE MOST DANGEROUS regulation is the Act of Suppression of Communism and its accompanying Terror Act. The suppression law defines communism vaguely as anything that is anti-government. Under the Terror Act, any person may be arrested and imprisoned without being charged.

This legislation puts South African journalists under constraints of a kind Western journalists rarely face. Many stories must be approved by government and military officials before publication. "With everyone in the business trying to do the same thing, this is incredibly time-consuming. Sometimes we just take chances and report the stuff," Klaaste says. Those who break the laws face vicious fines and imprisonment.

Still Klaaste says this control has not dampened the spirit of would-be journalists. "The whole country has a violent psychosis," he says. "You can go to jail for anything, and the youth nowadays are very brave and very angry."