re: "Faulty comparison" (BP, PostBag, October 23, 2019)
Dear editor,
Thank you Whale ("Faulty comparison", PostBag, October 23) for the thoughtful response to my letter on the foundational role of a free media, but a couple of points left me confused.
First, after explicitly agreeing with me that "free media may be essential" to a democracy and any other society that aspires to good morals, you seem to disagree with regard to both Thailand and Australia.
It is certainly true that Australia's prime minister says that he "supports the free press," but it is less obvious that he does in fact support the free press. Just because someone says they support X does not in fact mean that they support X. The evidence for or against the claimed support is their acts, including the laws that they support or have made, and his acts based on Australian law to stop the Australian press investigating and reporting on matters of national concern to Australians suggest grave lapses in my PM's support for a free press.
The same is more so for Thailand, where the wording of sections 34 through 36 of the latest permanent constitution of the Thai nation seems written with intent to enable easy suppression of both free speech for Thai citizens on Thai affairs and a free press investigating to report truths and honest opinion on those matters of Thai national concern. This leads to the strange situation where foreign media can be a better basis for informed opinion of worth on Thai affairs.
You also repeat a common failure of critical thinking. Merely because someone else is worse, even much worse, cannot justify a lesser bad. Yes, Myanmar and Cambodia are worse than Thailand when it comes to censoring the press to enforce ignorance of national affairs. China is even worse at censoring to impose ignorance of Chinese concerns on its citizens. But this is no reason to accept the lesser wrongs. Would you similarly argue that Mr X should be let off because he only committed one murder while Ms B committed ten?
Felix Qui
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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.
The text as edited was published in PostBag on October 24, 2019, under the title "'Lesser bad' still bad" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1778719/case-closed
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