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Representatives of media organisations file their opposition to a media-regulation bill with Alongkorn Ponlabut, second right, vice president of the National Reform Steering Assembly, at the parliament on Thursday. (Photo by Chanat Katanyu)

The whip committee of the National Reform Steering Assembly (NRSA) on Thursday rejected the controversial media regulation bill in the face of growing opposition from media organisations and told drafters to review it.

It agreed in principle that there should be a national media council but there were concerns inside and outside the assembly and the issue involved the public, Khamnoon Sitthisamarn, spokesman of the NRSA whip committee, said.

We agree in principle the voluntary self-regulation of media organisations should be upgraded and become a responsibility of a legal profession council. But the composition and authority of the councillors should be reviewed, he said.

The NRSAs media reform panel which drafted the bill would review that and resubmit the bill soon, Mr Khamnoon said.

Early on Thursday, representatives of 30 media organisations filed their written objection to the bill. They stressed that the bill would let authorities influence the mass media against the spirits of the new constitution which already passed a referendum and ensured independence and self-regulation among media organisations.

They also proposed that the head of the NRSAs media reform panel be replaced, saying ACMKanitSuwannatehad falsely claimed representatives of media organisations supported the bill and it passed a public hearing organised by the Thailand Development Research Institute.

Besides, four media professionals resigned as members of the NRSAs media reform panel in protest.

Opponents said the NRSA media reform panels draft bill on rights protection, ethical promotion and standards of media professionals would empower the national media council to issue and revoke licences for all media professionals.

Their main concern is the four seats in the council reserved for permanent secretaries of some ministries. They view the requirement would allow interference in the media and limit peoples rights to information.

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Media control bill suspended | Bangkok Post: news - Bangkok Post

Snap Inc. often likens its app to a new form of television. Its also borrowing from the playbook of traditional media companies to create a small circle of power in its top ranks.

Using three classes of stock, founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy will hold majority voting rights after an initial public offering, according to the companys prospectus. That sort of control is rare outside the media business or the hottest technology companies.

Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy.

Photographer: J. Emilio Flores/Corbis via Getty Images

The Snapchat app maker intends to go a step further than most newly public companies by selling Class A shares in its IPO with no voting rights. As a result, Spiegel and Murphy can avoid losing power while raising capital.

Snap is doing something I have not seen before: creating and issuing non-voting shares at the IPO, said Jesse Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School. After the IPO, Snap can issue additional non-voting stock to employees or other parties without eroding the founders control rights.

The use of multiple voting classes has been a common way for media moguls to retain power over their businesses while reducing their financial stakes. Rupert Murdoch uses the strategy at News Corp. and Twenty-First Century Fox Inc., as does the Ochs-Sulzberger family at the New York Times Co. and Sumner Redstone at CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. These arrangements come with their share of resistance from stockholders.

Media barons have said the ownership structure is necessary to protect their companies editorial independence or creative freedom,said Paul Gompers, a professor at Harvard Business School. Outside shareholders understand that the insiders have the ability to call the shots, he said.

Tech companies can thank Google for legitimizing the practice in their industry. To sell the idea to prospective investors, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin compared their business with newspaper publishers and Wall Street favorite Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which owns several papers.

When Google filed to go public in 2004, they acknowledged that dual-class structures were unusual for tech companies but typical among publishers that wanted to focus on the long-term task of serious news coverage, despite fluctuations in quarterly results, according to their IPO paperwork. They cited the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones, as well as Warren Buffetts Berkshire.

We want Google to become an important and significant institution, Page and Brin wrote. That takes time, stability and independence. We bridge the media and technology industries, both of which have experienced considerable consolidation and attempted hostile takeovers.

Since then, several tech companies have adopted dual-class shares, with mixed results. Under Mark Zuckerbergs control, Facebook Inc. has weathered several technological upheavals, including the shift from desktop to mobile, and more than tripled its share price. However, some investors still chafe at his unchallenged power. Facebook is currently trying to fend off a shareholder lawsuit, including allegations that board member Marc Andreessen helped advise Zuckerberg at the expense of shareholders.

The founders of online coupon site Groupon Inc. and social game maker Zynga Inc. employed dual-class shares to give top executives majority voting control. Each founding CEO was ousted less than two years after their IPOs, and their market values have dropped by more than two-thirds since going public in 2011.

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To our knowledge, no other company has completed an initial public offering of non-voting stock on a U.S. stock exchange, Snap wrote. We cannot predict whether this structure and the concentrated control it affords Mr. Spiegel and Mr. Murphy will result in a lower trading price.

Google, now owned by Alphabet Inc., was sued over the issuance of non-voting stock and later for creating a third class of stock cementing Page and Brins voting control for good. It settled both cases.

Youll continue to see this trend happening until there is something really negative as a result, said Thomas Ivey, partner at law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

The money-making side of Snap is fairly young, but its increasingly positioning itself to take advertising dollars from media companies. Its aiming to keep the eyes of its largely millennial audience glued to its app, interspersing ads into video reels and in publishers Snapchat content.

The company has warned that its financial performance will be lumpy as it continues to grow, people familiar with the matter have said. In its IPO filing, Snap reported a 2016 net loss of $515 million, versus a loss of $373 million in 2015.

Snap is asking potential investors to trust a couple of twentysomethings to figure out how to capitalize on user engagement, keep growing and eventually reach profitability -- without shareholder intervention.

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Snap's Concentrated Power Structure Takes a Page From Old Media - Bloomberg

Plex is an amazing piece of media server software that's a very popular solution for those who love movies and music. Plex today has announced a new Alexa skill that allows Plex users to use Alexa to suggest and play their movies and music.

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Control Your Plex Media with New Alexa Skill - SuperSite for Windows

Cambodia's wealthy elite is increasingly buying media outlets, according to a joint Media Ownership Monitor (MOM) project by Reporters without Borders and the Cambodian Center for Independent Media. Among 27 owners surveyed in the project, nine are business and political tycoons and 10 are politically affiliated.

Experts say these media owners are keen to protect their interests and the interests of the government which protects them at the expense of providing news to citizens.

In Cambodia, many media owners are tycoons, or oknha in Khmer, the primary language. The king confers this title once a person contributes $100,000 to a so-called social development cause. As of 2012, approximately 2.66 million of Cambodia's 15.9 million people lived on less than $1.20 per day, and the estimated per capita income was $3,700, according to the CIA World Factbook.

"If [the tycoons] are involved in politics, then I would say it even gets more problematic," Charles Davidson, executive director of Kleptocracy Initiative at Hudson Institute, told VOA Khmer. He spoke to VOA in a phone interview after a recent event in the Kleptocracy and Democracy Debate Series, held in Washington.

FILE - A participant asks a question during a Kleptocracy and Democracy Debate in Washington, D.C., Dec. 1, 2016. (Say Mony/VOA Khmer)

"So, I would say that's a danger and it's a worldwide trend," Davidson said.

The control of media by wealthy elites in developing countries and democracies in transition is a worrying trend, which could potentially lead to danger, according to media experts in the United States.

Conflicts of interest

The wealthy who own media outlets have many other financial interests, and there are often obvious and subtle conflicts of interests. The result can be a media environment that bows to power rather than speaking truth to it, as is the best practice in many developed democracies, according to experts.

"If the power gets concentrated in one country with no democratic traditions and no good journalistic traditions, and there is one guy who comes out on top, and there is not any competition any more, then I think there is a very dangerous situation," said Martha Bayles, media professor at Boston College in Massachusetts, in an interview with VOA at the Washington event.

The trend toward a concentration of media ownership in developing democracies is emerging as the media worldwide especially the independent and critical outlets in developed democracies come under attack by politicians and the powerful for reporting facts that negatively touch on the business or political interests of the elite.

Last week, in response to perceived media attacks on the Trump administration, Stephen Bannon, the president's chief White House strategist, told The New York Times that "The media here is the opposition party."

In Cambodia, Pa Nguon Teang, the executive director of the Cambodian Center for Independent Media, said when media ownership is concentrated among the wealthy elite, it will lead to a government less accountable to the people it is supposed to serve.

FILE - Pa Nguon Teang, executive director of the Cambodian Center for Independent Media, is shown at Phnom Penh Municipal Court, Aug. 18, 2016. (Leng Len/VOA Khmer)

"Those working in the media controlled by tycoons or big business people under the political influence from the ruling party and the government, dare not voice their other opinions contrary to the political line already set by their media outlets," he told VOA. "So, this makes a loss to independent viewpoints needed by Cambodian people."

Or, as Davidson put it, "The media is going to be under the government control entirely, and anybody who is practicing journalism outside of that control is essentially a dissident."

Accusations against Hun Sen

Critics say the Cambodian government led by Hun Sen, one of Asia's longest-serving prime ministers, has been attempting to control or influence the media through various means, either by having family members own media outlets or suppressing those independent voices critical of his government and his more than 30-year rule.

Cambodia has more than 100 radio stations, dozens of television stations and more than 400 newspapers in operation within the country, according to the government figures. Most of the media outlets are owned, controlled or run by the ruling elites. Critics often say such outlets devote most of their broadcast time to entertainment programs rather than news, in part as a way to take people's attention away from government or ruling-class businesses.

Jeff Gedmin, a former president of VOA-affiliated Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and a senior research fellow at Georgetown University, told VOA Khmer at the debate that "we want to inform the people, too, in a responsible way.

"You can't have good decisions unless you have good facts," he said, adding, "All of us, whether you are Cambodian or American."

Government response

Phay Siphan, a Cambodian government spokesman, said authorities do not control any media outlets except the only state-run National Radio of Kampuchea (RNK) and National Television of Kampuchea (TVK).

"All have freedom of speech and are free to broadcast anything because they are private media," he said in a phone interview. "The state does not provide funds like the ones received by Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. In this country, the media survive by themselves."

FILE - Sok Eysan, spokesman for the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), talks to reporters in Phnom Penh, Jan. 5, 2017. (Hul Reaksmey/VOA Khmer)

Likewise, Sok Eysan, a spokesman of the ruling Cambodian People's Party, which has been in power since 1979, said each media outlet owner is the person who decides what to broadcast without getting any orders from the government or the party.

"The prime minister has never threatened a general director of any radio or TV station to broadcast his activities. Whether they want to broadcast them or not is up to each of them," he said.

"If we determine that you have to write about or broadcast this or that, for example broadcast only boxing and not any concerts, then that's not possible," Eysan added. "It depends on the producer of the program to make sure they have all sorts of entertainments in all art forms."

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Study: Cambodian Media Ownership Concentrated Among Elite - Voice of America

Gen Prayut meets the media, a press corps that has been easier on his regime than it was towards elected governments headed by the Shinawatras. (Bangkok Post file photo)

The relationship between the military and most media outlets is not bad, even though it is not completely friendly either. So why is the regime's reform body proposing a bill to control the media?

Hated by both journalists and consumers, this senseless bill will let government officials and outsiders regulate the Thai press. It will not benefit anyone but governments and their bureaucratic arms who can easily escape scrutiny. And the only incentive for this regime to not kill the bill is its aspiration to prolong its executive power or rise to the top, again.

I am not being overly negative. The military has managed to curb its dissenters. The constitution it sponsored will grant it more power through the selection of senators. Then its lawmakers revised the Computer Crime Act that will allow oversight by the state over people's lives. It has paved the way for calm and order. Taking control of the media is a logical next step that can help maintain calm.

Surasak Glahan is deputy oped pages editor, Bangkok Post.

If the bill becomes law, the Thai press will be dragged into unfamiliar territory of harsh state controls experienced by their peers in neighbouring countries like Vietnam, China and Laos, while consumers can expect more uniform coverage, less diverse content and self-censorship by the messenger.

I still remember being at a press conference in Vietnam and feeling sorry for a Vietnamese journalist who was warned onsite by a high-level government official over her "inappropriate" question. "It's ok," she told me later without showing any sign of frustration. She and her colleagues there know the rules of the game, she said.

Now that kind of rule is being initiated as the controversial bill and the game will be played by a media professional council comprising five members from the media, four permanent secretaries and another five people from other sectors.

The bill proposes the establishment of the council who will have power, through licensing, to decide who can and cannot work as reporters, writers, photographers, cartoonists and editors. It will also determine what ethical and professional standards are.

The Thai press will have to be prepared for the backward reform, apply for a licence to work for the first time and toe the line. Following the 2014 coup, the BBC World Service seemed to see this kind of control coming. It has since revived its Thai service, scrapped in 2006, to give an alternative Thai-language news channel to Thai consumers.

The Computer Crime Act impacts civil liberties as it will foster a Big Brother type society. Now comes the media regulation bill that will "oversee and streamline ethical standards of the media", as described by ACM Kanit Suwannate, chairman of the National Reform Steering Assembly's media reform steering panel who proposed the bill.

"If you don't do anything wrong, there's nothing to fear," he said.

Well, no media professionals can trust his words given that ethics and standards are yet to be drafted. And none of us can trust that these 13 people -- the majority of whom are not working journalists, will deliver sensible ethics and standards.

None of us can afford to be too complacent. This is not just about limiting press freedom, but a step further for more complete control over the Thai public.

The regime has no reason to endorse the bill if it does not aspire to become the next government. The media have not been as critical and hostile toward the current military government as they were to previous civilian governments. Likewise, the military has not interfered with the media's business as much as was allegedly done by civilian administrations.

It is true that there's still room for improvement for Thai media outlets when it comes to their integrity, impartiality and subjectivity. But this is not the regime's business. Most media organisations already have their own codes of conduct. The defamation law forces every journalist to be accurate and truthful in their reporting. Poor quality of content, biased reporting or a lack of diversity will all be judged by readers and consumers, who will hold the entire press sector accountable.

The proposed law will merely take us back to the time when we had a media censorship board before it was scrapped following the birth of the now-resolved 1997 People's Constitution. If that kind of censorship is brought back, governments and public offices will not be effectively watched by the media.

We can only hope that this useless bill will be killed by the cabinet and the National Legislative Assembly if this regime is sincere in keeping its word to not further pursue power or prolong it.

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The reason the govt wants media control - Bangkok Post