I was asked by a listener at our forum if I considered myself a “media”, after I launched an episode about the event and talked about the question raised. The question was, in facts, at the back of my mind ever since we launched our podcast and that was two years ago, but I never gave it much thought. The subject is too abstract for me. Being a little podcasting site does not make me think too much about it. But having produced our contents, by friends and acquaintances, we do feel responsible for what we say, hence, the real names and photos at the site. Judging from how sloppy we are, in terms information accuracy and proper citations, I do not think we are qualified for the term “media”. However, looking across the Thai content universe, I can’t help but think that the question is probably a moot point.

It helps to enjoy living in any country if you can understand the local language and Thailand is no exception. Being a native Thai, I feel sorry for how much juicy news (gossip, if you prefer) or local spice one could miss for not understanding Thai. For instance, I could recall reading an interview from Wanchat Padungrat, the founder of Pantip.Com that he could not find an equivalence of Pantip.Com community in other English-speaking countries, presumably that that was the only language he could venture, on his own, in cyberspace to find out.

Pantip.com, If you do not know it, is a webboard, averaging over millions hits per day. It covers all kinds of topics one can think of and dare post it in puclic in Thailand. The site is, without a doubt, the number one webboard in Thailand. With vast amount of informations posted every minute, the “cafe”, or webboard, is divided into various sections, or “room” in Pantip term, to align everyone’s interest. For example, “Chalermthai” room is for topics about movies, radios, TVs, actors, actresses, etc. As of October 2008, there are twenty-three sections. If a topic has a high popularity, Pantip would assign a sub-section in that section to make life easier for the like-minded. If a post is interesting enough or generates a large thread, it would be upgraded to a “sticky” post and branded as “recommended”, and, mind you, there are quite a few recommended posts in each section.

With the kind of traffic Pantip.Com gets, those “sticky” or recommended topics imply that these are some interesting stories. If you want to check how Thai feel about a certain issue or check what the current events/topics people talk about, Pantip.Com would be the place.

I could remember hearing the news back in 2001 about a pedophile case involved a Thai senator. It was leaked in local newspaper with no hint as to who this was. Sure enough, Thailand in 2001 has embraced the Internet, so Pantip.com was my first destination to check as local newspapers were all hopeless. Not only did one could find the answer within minutes, you could even see the passport photo of the senator in question. I do not know if the term “Citizen Journalism” is a formal term with an interpretation, but this was very close, to me, as Citizen Journalism at work. Of course, there were many more examples to come, but this was one of the early ones where the news really came from user-generated content.

By the way, the 68-year-old senator was sentenced to a 36-year prison term by the supreme court in November 2007.

These days, especially in the last three years, I can’t help but read many sites, until I can draw my own conclusions about what really happened. Ones could start with BangkokBiznews.Com, followed by Matichon.co.th and ended up with Manager.co.th to see the juicy parts and what-is-wrong-with-Thaksin-today. With those, I could get a sense of the overall of what’s going in Thailand. Then, to go hardcore, politicalwise, I could check with Prachathai.Com and SameSkyBooks.Org. Or, to take the lighter side, just visit Pantip.Com and browse through the recommended topics, that would be enough to see what’s in trend. With so many web sites and bloggers around, it’s quite easy to find out if stories are facts-based. Whether they are neutral or not, heh, I can draw my own conclusion. Besides, guaging from whats being published in the Thai newspaper these days, I can no longer understand the term neutral.