Unspun

I’ve been busy all day and have not had a chance to watch the news except at 6am today, when I turned to BBC and CNN to get an update of the Thai military coup. What I saw was enough to make me think that CNN is a joke in Asia.

I first tuned to the BBC and we had correspondent Jonathan Head reporting on how it was a relaxed military coup. Looking relaxed himself and carrying an unbrella, he was was shown in the streets. BBC also had footage of tanks and military personnl in the streets. They even showed some Western journalists trying to get a drink but was disappointed because the bars were closed.

Those of us that knew Jonathan Head when he was BBC correspondent in Indonesia will know that he is probably one the hardest working journalists you’re likely to encounter and that he’s almost always spot on with his fair and incisive reporting.

I flipped to CNN and the news was entirely different. I forget details but the impression given was that there was this coup has the scale and intensity of a Tiananmen. Tanks were rolling in the capital streets, transmission for TV was blocked etc etc. In short they were putting out a story radically different from BBC’s. 

Unfortunately the CNN version was a crock of bull. But don’t take my word for it. Check out Metroblogging Bangkok for a first hand account of the coup and how the networks tried to cover it. (Thanks reader Amyra from Bangkok for the tip).

This is one instance where blogs are keeping the journalists honest, or at least trying to unspin their spin. Good one guys at Metroblogogging Bangkok (from whom I “borrowed” the photos for this post – note the how “dangerous” the coup must have seemed to the CNN reporter).