Television Persuasion

(Please excuse the short detour to a slightly non-travel-related topic)

As we’ve traveled in Thailand our hostel and guesthouse rooms have become much nicer than those we were accustomed to in India and Myanmar. This has meant that we’ve started seeing TVs in rooms (what!?), and with those TVs I’ve noticed a proliferation of English-language news channels sponsored by foreign governments. While I was generally aware of such channels, I’ve found them much more in my face in Thailand given the far fewer number of channels here, that so few of those channels are in English, and that many of the foreign channels aren’t available on US cable systems.

We seen on our TVs here the following English language state-sponsored channels:

• Al-Jezeera (Qatar)
• RT (Russia)
• NHK World (Japan)
• BBC (UK)
• CCTV (China)
• PressTV (Iran)
• And also CNN, arguably difference since it’s privately owned, but obviously broadcasting from a US perspective.

It’s been fascinating to see each channel’s take on current events. While each might appear somewhat objective when only viewing that channel, switching back and forth between channels shows clearly that each channel shapes its perspective of a conflict or other news item, and that such editorializing is passed on to its viewers.

While we were in Thailand probably the best example of this was the Ukraine protests, which were just starting to spiral out of control. The BBC and Al-Jazeera featured reports favoring the protesters, while the RT channel was heavily anti-protesters. Switching back and forth between the channels would lead a viewer to think that they were covering completely different events. NHK World was on its own, focusing entirely on Japanese topics.

While the well-known saying is that “History is written by the victors,” based on the importance these countries place on getting others to view current events from their viewpoint, perhaps the new saying should be “Those who write history become the victors.”