Speaking at a seminar yesterday titled "Human Rights Look at the Media, and the Media Look at Human Rights" held at Chulalongkorn University, Anand said both human rights advocates and media professionals must prioritise their search for truth and integrity.

"The media have to be confident with the truth they are going after. They cannot just try to stay neutral in the face of right and wrong. There is no neutrality between good and evil," he said.

"In Buddhism," he went on, "there is no [compromise] between good and evil, truth and falsehood. If one wants to stay neutral, then one is just trying to cut a corner for oneself."

Anand's comment highlighted the bitter political divide between caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's supporters and his critics who want to force him from office for alleged abuses of power.

Despite the allegations of wrongdoing, the premier's supporters remain devoted, saying Thaksin has been playing by democratic rules and if most Thai people want him out, they can vote him out of office at the polls next month.

Thaksin-bashers, meanwhile, counter that with his routine abuses of power capped by his family's sale of national assets to a Singaporean firm, Thaksin no longer has the legitimacy to remain a force in Thai politics. They say their mass rallies are not a resort to mob rule, but rather peaceful, popular acts of civil disobedience.

With opinions so polarised, media professionals and human-rights experts must uncover the truth and present it to the public even at the expense of objectivity if need be, Anand argued.

"Even if there are attempts to present the other side of the story and we know they are false, then we have to ignore the falsehoods," he said. If necessary, Anand said, the media can present just one side of the story - the side of truth.