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National Legislative Assembly member ACM Chalee Chanruang will handle the media-control bill when it reaches the NLA, and says it will face strong opposition. (Photo via PRD)

The chairman of a National Legislative Assembly (NLA) subcommittee on media reforms has conceded it will not be an easy task to roll out the controversial law regulating the media.

ACM Chalee Chanruang said the bill has still not undergone public hearings.

This process is needed to comply with Section 77 of the new charter.

There is a strong possibility the Protection of Media Rights and Freedom and the Promotion of Ethics and Professional Standards Bill will be amended before going to the NLA, he said.

The bill was endorsed by the National Reform Steering Assembly on Monday amid opposition by members of the media.

It needs to go before the cabinet for consideration and then the NLA.

Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-Ngam said that as the draft legislation is yet to undergo public hearings in line with the new constitution, the government will proceed by gauging opinions from all sides including those of the media.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, on World Press Freedom Day Wednesday, said the media should find a balance when working with the government. The press should support good things done by the government and criticise bad things, although there should be mutual respect, he said.

The Thai Journalists Association (TJA) and 29 other media bodies released a joint statement to mark the day.

The TJA demanded the bill be suspended and regime orders limiting press freedom be revoked.

Speaking at the TJA seminar, Supinya Klangnarong, an ex-member of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, said the bill is an attempt to expand state power and limit that of the people.

National human rights commissioner Angkhana Neelapaijit said the government should guarantee that the media will not face threats.

NLA member Somchai Sawaengkan said he disagreed with the bill.

Talking to the Bangkok Post, Swedish ambassador to Thailand Staffan Herrstrom said freedom of the press contributes enormously to democracy, transparency and innovation.

"You need that kind of wide space for different views just to encourage people to think outside the box," he said.

Finnish ambassador Satu Suikkari-Kleven said Finnish journalists adhere strictly to ethical guidelines while people are active in monitoring the conduct of the media and discussing social issues openly.

In a separate development, the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand received a letter from police at Lumpini station asking it to cancel its discussion on "Memories of 1932: The Mystery of Thailand's Missing Plaque", scheduled to be held at 7pm Wednesday at its office in Bangkok. The FCCT changed the topic to one on world press freedom instead.

Finnish Ambassador Satu Suikkari-Kleven shares experience from Finland where freedom of the press strongly connects with democracy, transparency and innovation. She also said Finnish journalists adhere strictly to ethical guidelines while people are active in monitoring the conduct of the media and discussing social issues openly. (Video byKornchanok Raksaseri)

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Media-control bill 'faces tough legal passage' - Bangkok Post

President Trump on Thursday blasted the media, saying members of the press will do anything to "get attention."

"The Fake News media is officially out of control," the president tweeted.

"They will do or say anything in order to get attention - never been a time like this!"

The Fake News media is officially out of control. They will do or say anything in order to get attention - never been a time like this!

Last weekend, he tore into the "FAKE" media's coverage of his first 100 days in office, accusing news organizations of ignoring the "great optimism" surrounding his administration.

"Mainstream (FAKE) media refuses to state our long list of achievements, including 28 legislative signings, strong borders & great optimism!" Trump tweeted last weekend.

On Thursday, the president also offered praise for the show "Fox & Friends."

Congratulations to @foxandfriends on its unbelievable ratings hike.

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Trump: 'Fake News media is officially out of control' - The Hill

UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, David Kaye, has urged governments to end the demonisation of critical media and ensure the protection of journalists.

Broadcast media are already regulated by a state agency. The authors said Most were not worldwide journalists, few had the support of major news outlets, and most died after fighting insurmountable odds, daily threats and constant pressures. In Botswana, two journalists from the INK Centre for Investigative Journalism were briefly detained and threatened with death by plainclothes security agents after they tried to access an area where a private holiday home was being built for President Ian Khama. I commend the Government of National Unity for its efforts to better engage with the press. Free media and an independent, effective judiciary play a mutually reinforcing role as pillars of democracy.

The global day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1993 following a Recommendation adopted at the 26th Session of UNESCOs General Conference in 1991.

Reporters Without Borders, a non-profit organization with the mission to safeguard the freedom of information globally, released its 2017 World Press Freedom Index on May 3rd, which ranks countries on the level of freedom available to the media.

IFJ General Secretary, Anthony Bellanger said that the survey shows the continuing threats throughout the world to media freedom and journalists rights but it also shows the daily and sometimes heroic work being done by journalists unions and organisations across the globe to defend the professional and social rights of journalists.

So, today let us pause to remember those courageous members of the media we lost in the past year while celebrating those who fight daily to uncover truth and tell us the stories we would otherwise never know.

May 3 was declared World Press Freedom Day by the United Nations in 1993 after a 1991 United Nations conference in Windhoek, Namibia, where African newspaper journalists presented a paper on press freedom principles.

Today, being World Press Freedom Day, participate in the poll below and share your thoughts. The EU consistently opposes in bilateral contacts with third countries as well as in multilateral and regional fora any legislation, regulation or political pressure that limits freedom of expression and takes concrete steps to prevent and respond to attacks against journalists and bloggers.

The CIVICUS Monitor, a new online platform that assesses the quality of civic space in every country, records 101 attacks on journalists between June 2016 and March 2017.

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Thai news organisations urge government to scrap media control bill - Normangee Star

BANGKOK Thirty media bodies in Thailand marked World Press Freedom day on Wednesday by calling on the military government to scrap legislation that seeks to tighten control of news reporting in the Southeast Asian country.

The call came days after a junta-appointed reform panel approved a bill to regulate the media that has drawn opposition from rights groups who say it is designed to boost state interference and curb independent reporting.

If adopted, the bill could establish a regulatory panel of 15 people, including two state officials and seven media representatives, to oversee all media platforms in Thailand, whether print, broadcast or online.

"The bill is essentially designed to facilitate political interference in the media and restrict press freedom," the Thai media organizations said in a joint statement.

The military government on Wednesday called off an event hosted by the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT) focusing on the as yet unsolved disappearance of a revolution plaque commemorating the end of absolute monarchy in 1932 - a subject on which the junta has largely evaded questions.

In a statement, the FCCT said, "(The club) stands by its colleagues in Thailand's domestic media as they struggle to maintain professional standards and editorial independence in particularly challenging times."

Thailand's military government, which took power in a bloodless 2014 coup, has attracted international criticism for curbing free speech and threatening press freedom.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said the government had no intention to silence media with the bill, but regulations were needed to push up the quality of the media.

The media is "an important part of the government's work", Prayuth told reporters at an event to mark World Press Freedom Day. "So I want the press to be balanced while working with the government for the people."

The government will now review the draft bill, before it goes to the National Legislative Assembly, a parliamentary body appointed by the military, for approval and passage into law, he added.

Thailand fell six places this year to rank 142 out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index of the Paris-based group, Reporters Without Borders.

(Reporting by Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Additional reporting by Aukkarapon Niyomyat and Panarat Thepgumpanat; Editing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Clarence Fernandez)

PARIS Independent centrist French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron extended his lead in the polls over his far-right rival Marine Le Pen on Friday, the final day of a tumultuous election campaign that has turned the country's politics upside down.

CARACAS Supporters of jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez held a vigil outside his prison demanding to see him on Thursday after rumors about his health rattled the protest-hit country where the death toll from anti-government unrest rose to 36.

WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he will travel to Saudi Arabia and Israel this month, kicking off his first foreign trip, where he will work to reinvigorate traditional alliances in the region.

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Thai news organisations urge govt. to scrap media control bill - Reuters

The lack of transparency of media ownership in Bosnia-Herzegovina contributes to a situation in which political and economic pressure limit the freedom of the media

(Originally published by Media Centar Sarajevo , media partner in the ECPMF project)

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, media ownership transparency largely remains absent of rules and limited to scant data from the most general business registers. The lack of political will and all too rare initiatives for uncovering media ownership have for years allowed diverse machinations in the advertising sector, limited the loosening of political and economic pressure on journalism, and damaged the interests of the public and the right to fair and balanced news.

There are no formal initiatives from the state to promote transparency of media ownership, while the efforts of civil organisations have mostly been limited to activities outlined for specific projects. The media itself has never launched any such initiatives on transparency, given that the screen of secrecy in the structures of ownership allow for legal and illegal activities that are often in contrast with the principles of the profession, with ethical or legal guidelines established by the media sector.

The directives of the EU for supporting media freedom in new member states, for the period of 2014-2020, stipulate that a database of media owners should be made accessible, that legal measures against monopoly and market dominance are necessary, and that the privatisation of public media should be a transparent process. It should be noted that Bosnia-Herzegovina has adopted none of these measures, says Sanela Hodi, researcher with Mediacentar Sarajevo, in the study The importance of media integrity: putting the media and journalism at the service of the public (Znaaj medijskog integriteta: vraanje media i novinarstva u slubu javnosti ).

The transparency of media ownership is in part made possible through the register of legal entities (for private and public media) and registers of associations and foundations (for those media that operate within the NGO sector), but does not provide any information about the direct and indirect owners, let alone offer information in a systematic way that would meet the desired level of transparency.

In addition to this, there is no single registry of business entities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and therefore the incomplete information about the ownership structure of businesses, to which the media belong, is scattered in various registers of the nine municipal courts in the Federation and five district courts in the Republika Srpska (RS).

Information about businesses is accessible in an online register of businesses , but there is very little information about Bosnia-Herzegovina businesses, while the RS has no such register.

Information about the media acting within associations and foundations are available on request, from those 14 registers, which makes them insufficiently accessible and searchable. The existing registers also don't have any categorization of subjects or associations, such that one could clearly distinguish between media, businesses and associations.

A certain transparency of media ownership does exist for radio and television broadcasters. Licenses for audiovisual or radio broadcasting are issued to natural and legal bodies by the Communications Regulatory Agency (RAK). It is required to submit basic information about the direct owners and gain the necessary approval for any subsequent change of ownership greater than five percent, according to Hodi, but she also says that the RAK currently does not publish information on the property, but only the names of directors, chief editors and contacts. Information about indirect owners is still hard to find, especially when it comes to owners from other countries.

The press council, a self-regulating body for online and print media, publishes the principal data about these sectors, such as titles, addresses, names and contact details for the lead editors, but no information about the ownership structure.

While print media is often considered closely tied to political interests, a particular irregularity and lack of transparency exists in the online sector , especially because many companies are not even registered as businesses.

The transparency of media ownership, in addition to the partial data in these registers, still relies on the goodwill of parts of the media to reveal who really stands behind it. The lack of transparency of media ownership reduces the possibility for the public to notice any influence on editorial policy. Political and economic pressure, which leads to the self-censorship of editors and journalists, has a fertile ground in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

For these reasons there is no information on the indirect owners and the end-users of the media in question, nor of the property relations, business and personal interests, commercial and political influences, or even the principal managers, emphasises Hodi.

In the last few years there has been a big effort on the part of civil society to promote transparency of media ownership in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The government supports them in principle, but no concrete measures have been taken.

The research of the South East Europe Media Observatory has for years helped to highlight the lack of transparency, while the Media and public reputation project, led by the Bosnia-Herzegovina Association of Journalists in collaboration with Mediacentar Sarajevo, the Council for the Press and the NGO, JaBiHuEU, will offer a detailed analysis of the current conditions and push for better solutions at the political level.

Translation: Ciaran Lawless/VoxEurop

This publication has been produced within the projectEuropean Centre for Press and Media Freedom, co-funded by the European Commission. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso and its partners and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.The project's page

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The media in Bosnia-Herzegovina: fertile ground for political control - Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso