The Birth of Cutting Edge Journalism

If you asked, “Now wait a minute, even if I buy into this psychotic story, how did it get started?” The answer would be in about 2005, when I worked as an editor of a cutting edge high-tech magazine called CIO Forum. CIO Forum was cutting edge in only one way really - in that it had practically no writers and to compete, the magazine took the direction of focusing on the competition in the high technology field.

In sum what all that meant was that I was doing most of the writing - about 15 major articles and practically all on commission. Obviously the result was that it honed my ability to read, analyze and write very critically but with loads of facts and common reasons and logic.

Yet the work with CIO Forum still gave me the time to start a political webpage and I used freewebs.com and started to follow the career of Thaksin, then the prime minister of Thailand. The site is thai-journalist-democratic-front.com.

I supported Thaksin and back then there were all in all about 10 sites that dedicated themselves to Thaksin like me. It was a small circle and everyone knew one another. As a professional journalist with training from the Bangkok Post and Reuters Foundation, I obviously had advantaged over others and therefore my background and the skill honed at CIO Forum, just pushed me to the forefront of those that loved Thaksin. As for most of the other press, like newspapers, radio and TV, 90% were anti-Thaksin and counted very little to Thaksin fans like myself. We, Thaksin fans, headed for the internet for our news and analysis.

It wasn’t long before Thaksin started to head south, not with popularity, because Thaksin even today is still immensely popular - but with the high society and the powers that be - like the military and a small bunch of very right-wing fascist reactionary thugs called the Yellow Shirts.

It was about 2006 and I was reading, compiling and analyzing what was going on and suddenly one day, I realized that all of it - what the military was saying, what the mainstream press were saying, what high-society folks were saying - all of it combined was nothing less than certain coup against Thaksin.

I remember checking Thaksin’s schedule and saw he was heading to the United Nations in New York, for a major speech. For some unseen and difficult to explain reason, my hunch was that the coup would take place then - when Thaksin was away.

By this time, Thaksin himself was a great fan of my writings. His cousin, the head of a major public relations company gave me a salary to just e-mail him my latest writings - to which he said that Thaksin had made an order to gather together my writings and send them to him ASAP.

Still I felt I needed impact - like a great impact to warn people that a coup was in the winds and most likely. So I wrote my story about the impending coup - especially after getting some inside information from some military men who were still loyal to Thaksin that indeed my hunch was correct. It was unfortunate for Thaksin that these loyal men were too afraid to tell him and Thaksin himself was too weary of the power games for advancement inside the military apparatus to take the information at face value.

But I posted the story in Pantip.com, Thailand’s most popular webboard, in the political room.

Well I was laughed at a great deal. Most said a coup was outdated in Thailand and could never happen again. Many pointed to all the skyscrapers in Bangkok and said how on earth could a city that hosts an international film festivals and a fashion week accept a coup. There was even a thriving futures market in Bangkok, for god sakes, and tourists visits Bangkok in their millions in a typical year.

But Thaksin also saw it coming and he certainly got my fax, through his public relations cousin, and according to Thaksin’s cousin - he freaked out. Only a week after my warning, the military high command relocated about 400 middle to low ranking soldiers out of Bangkok. These were of course, Thaksin’s military loyalists. Days after that, Thaksin called in the most senior military commander and asked him point blank, “Will there be a coup?” The answer was no - a few months later, the man who said “No” staged the coup.

A few months after the coup and everything was shut down in Thailand - meaning there were no free speech left - even Pantip.com was shut down. Everyone was scared. At CIO Forum, for the first time, some strange people in uniforms would come and stand at the office compound gate and just stare, mixed with a sly smile, at me. It was obviously a warning sign to shut up. I was lucky, in that I come from a high-society background with loads of friends from a good school and people who know me through my famous doctor father. That means hands-off and I can’t be overtly pressured too much. Other journalists weren’t as lucky and really felt the heat. But simply stated - a few months after the coup all the press that was pro-Thaksin and against the coup - just clamped their mouths shut. Overnight, critical thinking disappeared from Thailand. The mainstream press just went hell bent on kissing the coup makers' butts. And that made it very hard to just stand by.

For such a competitive writer like me, who increasingly was addicted to sharp cutting edge critical attacks it was doubly difficult.