Phuketwan news website to close despite court win

The Phuket-based news website Phuketwan will close at the end of this year as curbs on freedom of reporting are becoming stricter, one of the website editors Chutima Sidasathian says.

Chutima said the news team has been “facing pressure”.

She said Phuketwan team members had decided to stop running the news website on Dec 31, even though the criminal defamation case filed by the Royal Thai Navy against them over a report on Rohingya migrants had been dismissed.

Chutima said the news team members felt uncomfortable since they believed they were unable to report news straightforwardly due to “outside limits and pressures”.

She said they had also faced threats occasionally but did not elaborate.

Negative social feedback caused by misunderstandings about their reports was another factor in the decision to close, she said.

Phuketwan and two journalists — Chutima and the Australian editor Alan Morison — were acquitted of libel and computer crime for quoting part of an award-winning Reuters report about a human trafficking network smuggling Rohingya people from Myanmar in 2008.

Regarding the reporting, Chutima said the team had done their best to be accurate and fair.

“I am delighted that some other media and also foreign media recognise the problem of human trafficking,” she said.

Chutima said if the Rohingya issue is followed up with more research then it might be possible to reopen the site if the media freedom situation improves.