Bangkok Pundit has a really post regarding the witch hunt for rumor mongers. Well worth reading in full.
The claim has been that the foreign press were responsible for rumors of the king’s serious illness and that it was foreigners who led the charge in dumping Thai stocks and causing the slide on the SET.
Of course, it was ASTV/Manager that led the Thai media in making these claims. BP shows that the claims are wrong-headed. The rumors were already there when Bloomberg reported what it was hearing from sources and locals were the main sellers.
The Abhisit Vejjajiva government is searching for the source of the rumors as a political witch hunt. Again, this claim that there were evil and disloyal people taking political advantage in the king’s ill-health seems to originate in ASTV/Manager and is then taken up by others in the Thai media. In fact, it is now the Democrat Party and their royalist allies who are seeking to reap political advantage from the monarch’s long and continuing hospitalization.
Political Prisoners in Thailand 