Doing the monarchy’s propaganda I

There’s a lot of palace propaganda about at present. We guess that most foreigners will rely on news outlets like the Bangkok Post, which has been around since 1946. To be around that long makes it a newspaper of record but also suggests a capacity for keeping on side with the elite. Indeed, its owners and board are of the ruling class.

Royal birthdays are usually regurgitation worthy times. The story on the king – “HM” – sorting everything out and responsible for everything good in government is pretty horrendous. Who knew or believes that “Royally initiated projects have played a vital role in elevating the lives of Thais and providing a cushion during difficult times”? Who knew or believes that the king has a “long list of royal achievements”? The “evidence” for this is a series of unbelievable claims.

Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Chalermchai Sri-on says that his ministry “follows the King’s guidance” – who knew or believes the king had any knowledge of agriculture?

The ministry’s claims that there were 1,601 royally initiated projects “implemented and completed in the 2019 and 2020 fiscal years” and another “543 projects … carried out in the 2021 fiscal year.” This seems quite unbelievable. Are there any projects other than royally initiated ones? Or is everything the ministry does labeled royal?

This is followed by claims that the Royal Irrigation Department has “3,402 projects which have been implemented, 3,333 are complete and 69 are under construction.” We wonder that if this is true, how many do anything useful?

Purveying palace propaganda is not just about producing vomit-inducing “stories.” Indeed, it means leaving out much. Of course, there’s long been self-censorship on the monarchy. Part of that has to do with fear of the lese majeste law, but it also has to do with shoring up the ruling class and the royalist ideology that cements that class together.

As part of this process of bending the news – and eliminating some of it – has meant the Bangkok Post has more or less stopped reporting on lese majeste. We did a quick search of the Post online for the past three months and found essentially no reporting of the young protesters who are calling for monarchy reform (there was one story on bail for one of them). Other than that, there was one story on Chadchart Sittipunt’s comment on lese majeste, several stories on the Lazada lese majeste case because it involved celebrities, and a couple of stories on the mad 112 case against Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit. The vast majority of 112 cases don’t get a mention.

We could be forgiven for thinking that the mainstream media is working for the palace. Certainly, by not reporting the travesties of injustice against the young protesters the Post is not serving its readers.