The Thai Public Broadcasting Service known as Thai PBS is a public broadcasting service that was established in 2008. The broadcaster was formerly known as iTV. The history of Thai PBS goes back to 2006 when the Surayud administration assembled a task force that was charged to conduct a study to transform iTV, then a privately owned channel, into a public service broadcaster. iTV was accused at the time of illegally changing its programming against what was required in the conditions from its broadcast license, which it had to comply with.
Media assets
Television: TPBS, ALTV
State Media Matrix Typology: Independent Public (IP)
Ownership and governance
Thai PBS was established by the Thai Public Broadcasting Service Act, BE 2551, which came into force in January 2008. According to the law, Thai PBS has the statute of a state agency with legal personality. However, it is not a government body (an agency directly subordinated to a state authority) or a state-owned company. The governing structure of the Thai PBS was designed in such a way to bar politicians from directly controlling the board appointment process.
Source of funding and budget
From the very beginning, the experts who wrote the plan for the creation of Thai PBS struggled to find a form of financing that would insulate Thai PBS from political pressures and influence. As a result, Thai PBS receives financing from sin taxes, which is a fiscal bucket consisting of excise taxes imposed by the government on goods and services that are considered to be harmful to society (such as alcohol, fast-foods, gambling or pornography). The broadcaster gets annually a state subsidy worth THB 2bn (US$ 62.6m at current prices in 2021).
Editorial independence
Thai PBS was designed from the beginning to ensure its immunity to political pressures or interference from state authorities. This governance design was key in ensuring the editorial independence of the broadcaster. Another tool used to make the broadcaster accountable directly to the public was the creation of a viewers committee tasked to assess the broadcaster’s performance. Thai PBS thus openly accepts complaints about its programs from regular viewers.
We haven’t identified any evidence of editorial control by the government at Thai PBS in spite of complaints about pressures from the army that journalists working with the broadcaster face on a regular basis.
The broadcaster has a Policy Board that is in charge of writing rules on professional ethics, securing the editorial integrity of the broadcaster.
In spite of all guarantees for its editorial independence, Thai PBS has continuously been attacked by each government. Very often, government officials accuse Thai PBS of not giving sufficient coverage to the work of the government or openly call on Thai PBS to propagate government news because, in their opinion, the broadcaster is financed by the state (as the sin taxes are collected by the government), hence it should also propagate news about the government. In spite of all these attacks and the extremely politicized environment, Thai PBS has managed to date to protect its independence to the largest extent possible.
October 2023