This is a blog only
I have been a journalist for, well donkeys’ years, and don’t think I have been compelled to report on a suicide, though I may have written about some star or starlet overdosing.
But here in Thailand the Pattaya Daily News ‘powerful news at your fingertips…fast…..true’ is continually and distastefully breaking new ground in this area, no matter who it is apparently.
Take this from today’s Pattaya Daily News about a Swede who has allegedly attempted suicide (presumably after reading yesterday’s issue)
“At the scene, room 11 on the third floor, police discovered Mr. Golane Miggale [47] (also reported as Mr. Yoraw Andersson [42]) a Swedish national, standing in his room covered in blood”.
Que? What? Vas? Va? Ursäkta? Excuse me?
This gets very complicated when four separate Pattaya newspapers are reporting on the same incident with scores of different names.
Getting the names right in stories used to be up there in the, well, it used to be the number one priority. Of course maybe the PDN are just throwing in a couple of made up names, because they really should not be reporting on this stuff at least until it gets to the level of Swedes on the Costa del Sol in the Seventies.
Apparently there were so many Swedes falling off balconies that Swedish police went themselves to investigate. The story goes that a Swedish policeman then fell off a balcony during a party. Nah. I don’t believe it.
The Pattaya Daily News’ intrusion into grief is only surpassed by its own actions today reporting the death of a ‘forlorn Brit’ who died in a room above a bar in Jomtien. This story is awarded seven pictures and enough detail that we are even told that on the way to the bar he did not wear a crash helmet. The PDN also photographed his NATWEST credit card and published it close up.
Actually the guy had asthma. It is not known how he died, but we are informed that he had a bar that went bust and a wife who ran off. Still I am not sure the PDN knows the state of his mind.
Anyway when I make my maker I hope it does not happen in Pattaya. I have a 50 per cent chance of being in a state of undress and I am not sure I want the PDN describing how I died with my trousers around my ankles.
Dont be too harsh on the PDN, it can get very confusing with so many suicides and so many crazy foreign names. Yoraw and Golane are probably both both in the morgue wearing each other’s name tags on their toes so arent likely to sue.
The readership doesnt really care about who the deceased is or why/how they died, so long as there’s a couple of juicy pixelated photos to accompany the article.
Mr Drummond it would only really matter if someone were so benighted that they mistook the content of the PDN, or any resort community’s English-language rags, for actual journalism.
The primary purpose of the dailies and weeklies in Pattaya, Phuket, Hua Hin and elsewhere is to put a gloss of respectability onto the publisher and his friends, all-too-typically involved in shady dealings of one sort or another.
Thank you on PDN’s behalf for your cynical and I might say libelous comments, which in any civilized country would earn you a none too pleasant law suit, but here, you’re lucky.
We at PDN do our best, it might not be the highest standard of reporting in the universe, but then we don’t have such exalted beings as Andrew Drummond working for us. As for your gibe that “primary purpose of the dailies and weeklies in Pattaya, Phuket, Hua Hin and elsewhere is to put gloss of respectability onto the publisher and his friends, all-too-typically involved in shady dealings of one sort or another.”
I can put my hand on my heart as the publisher and swear on all that is holy that we have no mafia connections, we’ve not been bought by gangsters or public officials and we don’t take bribes, merely tell it as it is, as much as we’re permitted. So turn your venom on a more deserving cause, please & let us get on with our attempt to bring something resembling news to cyberspace without your verbal molestations.
This is what a poster called Timekeeper wrote on two other sites about the ‘forlorn Brit’ whose wife allegedly ran off with everything.
“I have known Wally Bishop for many years both in UK and in Thailand.
He was far from being lonely and forlorn as the headline and the news story on Pattaya daily news suggests
In the UK, he was a highly regarded licensee for Bass Breweries before retiring here on a substantial pension.
He was a good hearted, generous soul who like many expats here drank too much, smoked too much and partied too much.
For a time he did open a bar on Soi 7 with his partner Gung, (not wife) of 14 years
It was not called the Wally Bar. as suggested by reporters
the bar was not a success and it eventually closed but no one ”did a runner” with any money as suggested by some, least of all Gung
Today she is still at the house they shared for the last nine years and she is distraught at the loss of her long time partner.
“Its easy to throw some tit bits of gossip together to make an interesting news story but it does not make it the truth
Wally had been a party guy all his life
He had many friends here and in UK
in my opinion, Wally just wore himself out
He really did live every day like it was his last.
Yesterday he was correct.
Rest in In Peace (though i somehow doubt it)
Wally enjoy the party wherever you are………
Needless to say nowhere have I suggested that PDN in controlled by the mafia.
When did PDN stop carrying ads and glowing editorial on “Ocean When” Tower?
Sirithanon, so I guess you are Thai?
Thailand is not a civilised country then?
“which in any civilized country would earn you a none too pleasant law suit”.
That was a great own goal wasn’t it?
Hmm Sirithanon, after having a look at your online “newspaper” site, I have to say its hardly surprising the flack you receive, imagine for one minute living in London and wanting to keep up with Thai news, but the best you can find is a news site written in poor Thai language by English people, imagine how frustrating that could be!
You see it doesn’t matter how long you spend at school learning the language, unless you are brought up in the country you will never master it, that’s why in England we employ Thai people to write Thai and English people to write English, but alas I could spend the rest of my life explaining this but you will never get it because your Thai.
Andrew Drummond I hate to enlighten you but you can bet your bottom dollar there are English native speakers on the PDN. But they still speak a different language