P-I banned in Thailand?-Seattle P-I
22-10-08
[FACT comments: We have not observed that any of the Seattle P-I pages are universally blocked at present. *Readers, please let us know if we are wrong. However, in the past Seattle P-I pages commenting on the Thai monarchy have been featured on ICT ministry blocklists.]
Reader Reports: P-I banned in Thailand
Moises Mendoza
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: October 13, 2008
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/thebigblog/archives/151347.asp?from=blog_last3
An interesting e-mail comes from a P-I reader Ann Marie Kimball who’s traveling in Thailand:
I am in Bangkok and doing on a Sunday evening what many of us do while travelling abroad … checking out local Seattle papers for news of home … only to find while I can access the Seattle Times a notice comes up that the Seattle P-I page has been closed by the Royal Thai police due to “pornography, gambling or issues of national security”
Our best guess is that the P-I has been censored because it’s carrying wire stories considered sensitive about the political crisis currently befalling Thailand. But the stories are just generic Associated Press stuff that everyone carries, even the Times.
Could this story by the irrepressable Paul Shukovsky about a local brothel allegedly run by a Thai citizen be considered porn?
Or could the P-I just have been caught up by mistake in some weird Thai dragnet?
Thailand isn’t exactly a hellhole for journalists but the government isn’t above censoring the media either.
I tried calling a spokesman at the Thai consulate in Los Angeles, but it’s closed today. We’ll try back Tuesday to see if we can figure out why we’re banned.
In the meantime, do you have any ideas?
