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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

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.

One of your most popular requests has been integration with Amazons Alexa. We have been wanting to bring her into the fold for some time, but she couldnt just be sprinkled in all willy nilly, she had to cover all the important functions of Plex and be totally awesome. She has finally arrived, giving you the ability to get rid of your remote controls and use just the sound of your voice to control Plex playback on your Plex clients. Ask whats On Deck or have Alexa recommend something to watchlet her take you for a ride!

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See how it works...

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

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

In the past few weeks, I have found myself having a bit of a crisis.

Despite the furor over fake news, I always considered myself savvy enough to pick it out. A wildly inaccurate headline there, a misleading photo there. Stories that seemed too good or too bad to be true, with bad grammar or slightly modified URLs of popular websites. The fake news model was rather predictable.

But recently and especially after Jan. 20, a strange thing began to happen: The line between clearly fake and mainstream began to blur.

RELATED:Tucker Carlson fights fake news on his own show after a man pretended to pay people to protest Trumps inauguration

Establishment media has already been having growing pains adjusting to a newly adversarial relationship with an administration, but creeping absurdity has begun to infect mainstream media, so long as it fulfills an existing one-note narrative. Suddenly, even someone like myself who works in public policy and follows mass media daily is questioning what is real and what is fake.

Whether it was stories claiming that President Trump had photoshopped his hand bigger or was planning to scale back LGBT protections, patently false Trump stories have gone viral and gained thousands of retweets, even among supposedly mainstream journalists.

Just in the last few weeks, CNN got caught falsely suggesting that Nancy Sinatra did not want her fathers song used at the Inauguration, and the New York Times spread a story claiming Governor Rick Perry didnt know the basics of his job that turned out to be based on a single quote from a person who later said it was taken out of context.

Meanwhile, a Time magazine reporter claimed that Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. that hadactually been hidden behind a Secret Service Agent, and just this Tuesday morning, a Pelosi staffer uploaded and later deleted a video purporting to be Speaker Paul Ryan saying that a press conference was a waste of my fucking time into a hot mic. CNN journalists and dozens of others retweeted the story without the most obvious of fact-checking such as asking if there were lapel microphones or if the Speaker was near the podium (spoiler: there werent, and he wasnt).

For the most part, these types of stories share the common theme of being rather frivolous and inconsequential. But quick shares of silly stories have real-life consequences.

President Trump, regardless of how one feels about him in general, is unquestionably a master of messaging. Every time mainstream journalists cry wolf or smugly spread a story that turns out to be fake, they damage their very important role as public guardians. Every time journalists cant be bothered to fact check, they give another out to the administration in cases of legitimate criticism, and make more people take its side.

Hysteria and half-truths are a godsend to Trump, despite his complaints, because he thrives on deflection. For every discussion of whether or not the recent Executive Order is a #MuslimBan (it isnt) or maybe a de facto ban (a longer discussion), there is less attention paid to real policy questions or the tragic consequences of bad implementation.

For every knee-jerk protest of a Supreme Court nominee before most protesters have even had time to Google who he is, there is less focus paid on more eyebrow-raising actions against legal residents.

RELATED:Does fake news really work best on conservatives, or is that just what some want you to believe?

In other words, perhaps, if literally everything is terrible, nothing is. And if journalists cant fact check stories that fit a narrative, they should expect their narrative to be questioned when it matters the most.

Bad government policy has the very real potential to destroy lives, and an aggressive media is a vital part of ensuring the public knows and is able to hold elected officials accountable. The infotainment empire was rightfully criticized for turning a blind eye at some of the excesses of the Obama administration and for playing footsie with the Clinton campaign.

But the shoddy fact-checking and one-note hysteria under Trump are just as worthless, if not more so. With lives and livelihoods at stake, its time for the media to stop handwringing about #FakeNews and take a long hard look in the mirror.

Read this article:
The mainstream media need to get their own #FakeNews under control - Rare.us

Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua recently announced plans to consolidate four existing state media companiesChina Securities Journal, Economic Information Daily, Shanghai Securities News and Xinhua Publishing Housewith a fifth soon-to-launch company, creating what is to be called the China Fortune Media Corporation Group.

Some reports have framed the news as relevant on a global scale. Business Insider, for instance, wrote China wants more control over its storyspecifically the story of its economybeing told around the world, in similar fashion to how RT acts to spread Russias viewpoint across the globe.

But while the consolidation is undoubtedly about message control, Jonathan Hassid, an assistant professor at Iowa State, says the move is about domestic communications more than international. And, he added, its hardly surprising.

The Chinese government has been pushing media consolidation for at least the last 15 years, Hassidalso the author of Pressing Back: The Struggle for Control over Chinas Journalists, which investigated journalistic resistance to government demands and censorship in Chinaexplained, the Chinese government wants to get these smaller players to consolidate because its easier to manage content.

Hassid doesnt mean manage in an administrative sense; content is controlled by the state in order to support and promote the Chinese Communist Party.

In fact, while the trend of consolidation is longstanding, President Xi Jinping has noticeably ramped up media control since taking office. Since 2013, the Chinese Communist Party has moved to reassert its dominance over the message, David Bandurski, editor of the China Media Project, a website that documents and analyzes the process of media reform in China, wrote last year.

As Bandurski summarized, Not only has General Secretary Xi Jinping, using the strongest language in decades, re-staked the CCPs longstanding claim to media controlhe has also moved aggressively against influential Weibo users, effectively muzzled the more outspoken commercial press, and placed himself at the helm of a powerful new Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs.

Just last year, Jinping visited three media companiesXinhau being one of themand reiterated their requirement to party loyalty. All news media run by the Party must work to speak for the Partys will and its propositions and protect the Partys authority and unity, he decreed.

Still, while Jinping has been explicit about the role and loyalty required of media, Hassid did add that censorship in China is unusual because its not always explicit. And, unlike censorship in the Soviet Union, for instance, its not carried out by a central group.

Most censorship in China is self-censorship, he said. People think theres this big government body that censors things. But its much more clever. Reporters involved will get in trouble days, weeks later. No one knows when the axe is going to fall. The rules are so deliberately unclear, most journalists step well back from any sensitive topic.

Alyssa Oursler is a freelance writer based in San Francisco. You can find her on Twitter at @alyssaoursler.

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The Chinese Government Is Rapidly Consolidating Its Media in Order to Control Their Domestic Message - Paste Magazine