The National Reform Steering Assembly (NRSA) voted on Monday by 141 against 13 to endorse reform proposals included in the draft media regulation bill, as put forward by its media reform committee.

Seventeen members abstained from voting at the meeting.

The NSRA decided not to set up a special panel to help the media reform committee settle differences raised at the meeting, and will forward the draft bill to the government for further implementation within 30 days.

The draft bill has become highly controversial, as it proposed regulation of the media via a professional council that would see at least two state permanent secretaries sitting alongside other council members, and through a licensing system for media professionals and organisations.

Proposed penalties of three years in jail and/or a maximum fine of Bt60,000 were also included for those failing to gain accreditation under the licensing system.

Media groups fear that the proposals would impose state control and interference in their work.

However, apparently responding to pressure from these groups, the committee’s chairman, ACM Kanit Suwannet, said at the beginning of Monday’s meeting that his panel had removed the licensing requirement for media professionals from the bill.

It would be replaced by a requirement for certificates to be issued by the operators of media organisations, he said.

The meeting discussed at length the draft bill’s controversial media-regulation mechanisms, with some 20 members proposing to deliberate the bill in detail.

Some NRSA members, including the NRSA whip and former columnist Kamnoon Siddhisamarn, strongly opposed the bill, saying it contradicted the fundamental democratic principle of freedom of expression.

It even contradicted its own principle of protecting the press, as the bill’s content went in the opposite direction by controlling the media, they said.

Meanwhile, other members – largely bureaucrats, senior military officers and professionals, including doctors – expressed their support for the bill, saying that as media organisations affected society at large via their work, there should be a new professional council, a system of accreditation or licensing, and ethical standards to help regulate their practices.

Kamnoon added that considering the current circumstances, it was widely agreed that the media should be reformed, and he personally agreed with and supported the idea to lever up media regulation from the voluntary level to legalising and institutionalising it via new legal enactment.

However, this must be done in such a way that allowed media members to regulate one another, in order to ensure that it was in line with press freedom as addressed in the newly promulgated Constitution, he stressed.

The NSRA whip said he disagreed with a number of key committee proposals: the two permanent secretaries jointly sitting on the proposed council; the licensing system, despite it being toned down to a certification system; and the broad definition of media professionals.

These, he argued, were all deemed to violate freedom of expression and press freedom.

“The National Council for Peace and Order declares clearly the roadmap to complete democracy. As such, the fundamental principle of it should not be violated in any respect, especially freedom of expression as well as press freedom,” Kamnoon said.

He also suggested at the meeting that it should revive a proposal by the now-defunct National Reform Council, which had proposed a bill to promote self-regulation among members of the media.

Nikorn Jamnong, an NRSA member who sits on the political reform committee, said the bill’s content apparently went against its own principle of promoting media protection and ethics by imposing several control measures and penalties against members of the media.

What is seen as the most problematic part of the draft bill is the apparent state interference in the media via the inclusion of two state permanent secretaries on the proposed professional council.

Nikorn suggested a rebalancing of proposed media regulation to ensure both the protection of media professionals and the rights of citizens, and added that the challenge was how to bring three parties – the state, the people and the media – together to discuss and settle their appropriate roles.

General Lertprat Ratanavanich, NSRA member and former vice chairman of the Constitution Drafting Commission, said the agreed with Nikorn, saying there was hardly any content in the draft bill which clearly addressed promotion of media protection and ethics, despite the title of the bill.

Kanit said at the end of the meeting that there was no country in the world in which either the government or the people moved forward alone on such an issue of national importance.

He insisted that his committee had listened to suggestions and already stepped back from its original position by changing certain points in its proposals a few times.

Moreover, there was a lot more work to be done after this stage and the panel’s proposals were just the beginning, he added.

Kasit Pirom, another NRSA member who sits on the political reform committee, expressed concern about Kanit’s attitude, saying that media reform was “not a battle of any one person”, and not a matter about which he should a claim that he had already extensively stepped back, “like flying a jet backwards”.

Moreover, while Kanit had cited examples of media regulation in Singapore and Malaysia, Kasit argued that these countries were “not relatively democratic” when dealing with the media and should not be promoted as examples to be followed in Thailand.

He insisted that the media here should be encouraged to self-regulate in order to help ensure morality in society, based on democratic principles, just as in any other democratic country.

Earlier, the Thai Journalists Association (TJA) submitted a letter to NRSA vice president Alongkorn Ponlaboot, calling for the draft bill to be withdrawn.

TJA president Pramed Lekpetch said the draft bill violated the principle of press freedom.

The press should be self-regulated or regulated by the public, but not by a media professional council as suggested in the bill, he emphasised.

Alongkorn said the law’s enactment would also need to involve the Cabinet and the National Legislative Assembly, with the opinions of all stakeholders taken into account and the pros and cons of the proposal analysed in accordance with Article 77 of the new Constitution.

He reiterated that the NRSA had no intention to restrict or interfere with media freedom.