BBC News Apologise For Jonathan Head's Abusive Email

As many of my readers know I have been deeply critical of the conduct of the BBC's Bangkok correspondent, Jonathan Head.

I believe, with good grounds, he has acted in an unprofessional fashion, has deliberately misled the British public about what is going on in Thailand and has then hidden this deceit behind highly dubious and dangerous claims of "neutrality". Incredibly he has portrayed the violent fascist protests in Thailand as "friendly", lied about the deaths of children in Bangkok and then blamed the pro-democracy Red Shirts for those deaths without one scintilla of evidence - something which marks Mr Head down as a disgrace to his profession.

To that end he is absolutely perfect as the new President of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand.

Back in January I inadvertently sent Mr Head an email when I forgot to remove his name from a very lengthy email list.

I immediately apologised to Mr Head for sending him the email yet was astonished when he responded with what can only be termed an abusive retort (see the screengrab below).

Today I received an apology from the BBC's Deputy Head of Newsgathering, Sara Beck, regarding Mr Head's conduct.

The BBC - whilst seeking £billions from UK taxpayers - have no real process of accountability even if they do send out the occasional apology when their correspondents act unprofessionally.

BBC's Jonathan Head: Now Asking Questions on Behalf of Thai Fascists.

UPDATE 2: BBC News in London apologised for Jonathan Head's abusive email to me - read the account of that here http://asiaprovocateur.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/bbc-news-apologise-for-jonathan-heads.html

UPDATE 1: After blogging this article Jonathan Head has just me an abusive email from his BBC email account. The matter has been passed to the BBC complaints team.


I've written previously about the BBC's Bangkok Correspondent, Jonathan Head's, seeming soft-pedalling on the violent antidemocratic, fascist protesters that are occupying the Thai capital's streets.

Head has previously tweeted he was "hugged" by one of the fascist supporters and then tried to wriggle off by claiming it was an old lady. Maybe Head doesn't realise old ladies can support fascism as well? 

Korn Chatikavanij and Thai fascist leader, Abhisit, on stage at a fascist rally in Bangkok.

Head has also called the violent protesters "friendly" and "colourful" and has refused, point blank, to even acknowledge that some of Thailand's most prominent academics and political scientists have termed the protesters "fascist". In fact, when questioned on why he didn't refer to the protesters as fascists, Head gave the kind of sneering rebuke that only a privately and Cambridge educated privileged Englishman is able to deliver.

Yet, today, after an interaction on twitter with representatives of Thai fascist leader, Korn Chatikavanij, it seems as though Head has lost his head.

@TeamKorn is the well-known twitter account of one Jirayu "Joey" Tulyanond, a close associate of former Finance Minister Korn. Joey also owns a luxury boutique hotel just outside central Bangkok that he seemingly uses as a "gift" to journalists who stay on-side with his political line. I exposed former Time magazine's Bangkok correspondent, Robert Horn, for very likely taking this "gift" from Joey. @TeamKorn and Joey also have the honour of launching a vicious smear attack on the dead political prisoner, the elderly and infirm Ah Kong AKA "Uncle SMS" - but Head wouldn't bother to research stuff like that as he's a very important "journalist".

After Head tweeted his intention to interview someone from the government Joey tweeted this comment - 

"@teamkorn  Did anyone see this news in other sources? Thailand National Rice Policy Committee Terminates Rice Mortgage ... http://tmi.me/1dvb8j"

To which Head replied

"@pakhead  @teamkorn Will be interviewing Niwatthanrong this morning so I will ask."

Joey then goes on to thank Head for raising the issue.

Joey and Head's super-chummy exchange on twitter.

To be honest I've never seen a BBC journalist behave in this way. Openly fraternising with fascist supporters is bad enough but to be openly and asking questions on behalf of those close to the fascist leadership? Utterly disgraceful.

Would Head pose questions raised by ordinary Red Shirts of Abhisit or other fascist leaders? Of course not. That would be "biased" and Head has probably only spoken to ordinary Red Shirts on a handful of occasions anyway. Head would, of course, have a natural affinity with the likes of Korn and Abhisit, both of whom attended posh, expensive private English schools just like Head himself. 

It all begs the question - what other Western media in Bangkok have been guests of Joey Tulyanond at his luxury, tropical boutique hotel, Bangkok Tree House?

Gone Missing – the failures of Western media reporting of the 2013 Thai Crisis

As some of my readers know I’ve long been critical of the Western media’s reporting of the ongoing Thai political crisis. Yesterday I blogged a piece outlining some of the Doublespeak terms usually produced by Abhisit Vejjajiva and the other elements of the “Democrat” Party-led anti-democracy movement. It’s my view that the Western media use some of these terms without investigation, analysis or critique thereby presenting and distributing a codified form of language that gravitates towards a Democrat Party-led narrative on some of the key issues affecting Thailand’s political crisis.

This post is an attempt to further unpack some of the other assumed “neutral” positions of the Western media and also some of the events and news items editorialised out by the journalists and reporters working for the Western media in Bangkok.

As this is just a first draft and I’m quite busy I’ll be adding in weblinks later on that relate to each matter listed here. I should also add that if people have sources that contradict my comments please let me know.

This is about Thaksin versus the Bangkok elites.

Such an oversimplified analysis that fails to take into account decades of political struggle, a pro-democracy movement stretching back to the 1930s and its subsequent brutal suppression supported, almost without equivocation, by the USA and other foreign governments. Thaksin’s rise is a very recent phenomena yet the ever-present are the Bangkok elites/networks and their allies in the Thai Army. This simplistic analysis also avoids recognising and evaluating the agency of ordinary Thai people.

This is just about anti-government protesters versus pro-government supporters.

I find this analysis not only simplistic but an insidious use of language that is encoded with a subtext of “resistance” to authority that is not really present in this instance. The better description would be, in my view, anti-democracy agitators or rioters versus pro-democracy activists. Whilst the Red Shirts – the group clumsily termed “pro-government” by the Western media – are broadly supportive of the democratically elected Pheu Thai government and Thaksin Shinawatra that support is very clearly conditional. For example the amnesty bill that supposedly sparked the recent Democrat Party-led riots was widely attacked and derided by the Red Shirts including many of their leading figures.

Yingluck’s 11year old son being harassed by Democrat Partysupporters.

As far as I’m aware not one single Western media source has given this any attention. It’s hard to fathom out why this isn’t newsworthy as it has been widely covered in the Thai language media and confirmed by the school itself. Very poor.

The disappearance of Thai fascist leader Suthep Thagsuban’s past.

Some reports, most notably by the Guardian’s Kate Hodal, appeared to conveniently forget that Suthep has been implicated in several corruption scandals, was disbarred from being an MP and has been charged with the murder of unarmed pro-democracy Red Shirt protesters in 2010. I found it simply astonishing that Hodal wasn’t able to avail herself of the most rudimentary facts regarding Suthep’s past and it appeared that the omission of these prominent facts was an effort to mislead the Guardian’s readership.

Almost complete failure to report very violent night-timeattack on 2nd December by Democrat Party supporters and Thai Blackshirts on Government House.

Our monitoring on that evening seemed to suggest there was not ONE Western journalist during this night-time attack which was possibly the most violent riot instigated by the Democrat Party Blackshirts since the protest began. [After receiving an email from Swedish journalist, Michael Topffer, it transpires he was there during these riots but he also appears to confirm that no other major international media outlet had a presence there - see Addendum below.] Also our monitoring revealed that there was a strong likelihood that Democrat Party activists were on the ground organising the riots. A complete failure by the Western media on this occasion.

That of the 5 reported deaths so far 4 are at the hands of the Democrat’s violent and fascistic Blackshirts and include 3 pro-democracy activists and one completely innocent 17year old burned to death in a bus.

The lack of reporting of this seems wilful and deliberately misleading. It’s simply astonishing the Western media have failed to report this adequately.

In the run up to the riots over the weekend of the 30th November/1^st December  there were a number of well-documented and very violent attacks on single pro-democracy Red Shirt activists by gangs of Democrat Party Blackshirts.

We monitored the reports being put out by the Western media up to the weekend of the 30th November/1^st December and could find no reference to ANY of the attacks by gangs of Democrat Party Blackshirts on pro-democracy activists despite there being more than enough evidence to warrant an investigation by journalists and reporters. These attacks included stabbings, beatings and very sinister cases of vigilantism where Democrat Party fanatics intimidated and threatened ordinary Red Shirts making them strip their clothing off and swear allegiance to certain persons. This is all missing from Western media reports.

The “students” attacking the pro-democracy activists were clearly infiltrated and mobilised by Democrat Party Blackshirt thugs with many of the “students” openly aligning themselves with the Blackshirts.

There was an attempt to portray the “students” as some de-politicised force inadvertently caught up in the protest. That was and is a complete fabrication. 



Addendum 

I received this email from Michael Topffer, a Bangkok-based Swedish reporter. I thought it was important to add his comments. I'll happily add any other response from any other Western journalist is they email me at asiaprovocateur@gmail.com

Hi, I saw your blogpost about failures of Western Media on Thai crisis
If you include Sweden in your view of the Western media I can say this:
Regarding the night of Dec 2nd, I was there, covering this for my paper Expressen. As far as I know, I was the only Western reporter there. BBC was there until around 10pm, I was there until 1am. It was exteremly violent. I gave a live report for our web-tv at 00:30 and had an article about the attack in the next day's paper.
Regarding Suthep's dubious past, I have reported it on many occasions, both for Expressen and for Swedish Public Radio, to which I contribute.
Regarding the whistleblowers at Yingluck's son, there were many conflicting reports as to what had happened, and by the time it was confiremd it was - in my view - already old. Besides, this was just a very small detail. I probably wouldn't have reported it anyway. After all, they were just blowing whistles.
I can't recall ever simplifying the crisis down to claiming that this is about Thaksin vs Elite.
Cheers,
Michael TopfferCorrespondent, ExpressenBangkok