The Nation reports:

Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej said Sunday that the political talk show programme Tua Jing Chad Chen (Clearly Real One), which is seen as being pro-former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, will be aired on Channel 11.

Samak said he would be the first guest of the programme when it is aired on Channel 11 on April 11.

The programme host flew to interview Thaksin in Hong Kong for airing but TITV was dissolved and transformed to Thai PBS before it could air the interview.

Samak said Channel 11 would be turned from government TV to a public service TV to showcase how a good public service TV should be.

Speaking during his Samak's Talk programme, Samak said his programme would be the only government programme on the reformed Channel 11.

BP: I must say I don't get the pro-Thaksin charges against the show. Was it daring to interview Thaksin? Was interviewing both Samak and Abhisit in the week before the election pro-Thaksin? Prachatai interviewed the host of the TITV show recently:

44 TITV workers have quit their membership of the Radio and Television Reporters Association after it revealed a survey by Media Monitor concluding that TITV was ‘biased against political parties', and inclined to favour the ‘old power clique'. Jom [TiTV host] insisted he always opened his programmes for all groups.

"I invited the Council for National Security in my launch programme. CNS leader Gen Sonthi Bunyaratkalin and Democrat Party leader Mr Abhisit Vejjajiva showed up several times in my programme. Only 4-5 percent of my time was given to the ‘old power clique'."

Jom said media people always demanded too much from other people, like political ethics, professional ethics, good governance, etc., but rarely practised them themselves. The media is definitely also an important cause of the current crisis of disunity, and there is heavy factionalization among the media.

"I thought, after the election, following the Thaksin interview, I would invite the anti-coup activists and the anti-Thaksin People's Alliance for Democracy to join my programme. I did send them invitation letters, and the anti-coup activists agreed to come, but the PAD refused saying they don't want to sit at the same table." Jom said.

BP: The Democrat's website has a couple of appearances by Abhisit on the show. If it was so pro-Thaksin, what was Abhisit doing on the show so many times? The case of PAD not wanting to show as they wouldn't have the stage all to themselves really sums it up. As I have blogged previously:

Jom doesn't understand the mentality of the anti-Thaksinites. The fact that he would ever interview Thaksin, no matter whether it was newsworthy or not, or anyone from the "old power clique" is automatically too much. It means you are outside the fold and beyond redemption.

btw, the Media Monitor survey, in Thai, is here. Some commentary on the survey, in Thai, is here. The criticism is more directed at TITV itself based on a survey it did over a one week period in November 2007 - oddly part of the survey was on political news content between 4-6pm which is outside of the prime-time news segments. Some of the direct criticism of TITV is that it favors larger parties over smaller parties and news reporters were involved in "advocacy journalism" by the words they chose. It also says that it offered criticism of Democrat Party policy on agricultural price support by academics on November 22, but it didn't on PPP policies although later in the survey it says that PPP didn't have any specific policies on this area - although it criticised the news report that day for not commenting on PPP's general economic policies

BP: It is a pity they didn't include all the details of what the TITV news broadcasts covered over the entire week and their specific incidents of criticism surround one day of coverage.

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