While it is unique because of its history that is tied to the May uprising of 1992, iTV has however become symptomatic of the system in which broadcast media are more often than not made to serve the political order of the day.

Of course, iTV is not the only TV station that has been subject to political interference. Successive governments took it for granted that all the state-owned broadcasters were there to serve as their political tools. Uncooperative journalists were taken off the air or forced to look for new jobs.

During the 1992 uprising all the broadcasters complied with the military order to give whitewashed accounts of the street demonstrations and subsequent shooting of pro-democracy protestors by soldiers. iTV was born in the aftermath of the bloody uprising and entrusted with the task of providing independent news reporting so that the public would not be manipulated by politicians or the power-holders again.

The irony was that it was Thaksin, himself a product of the political reform that came with the 1997 Constitution, who managed to put an end to iTV as an independent broadcaster. Of all the political leaders that came to power, Thaksin was probably the only one who understood the power of the media and how it could be exploited to serve his political agenda.

In a country like Thailand where the majority of the people live in rural areas and have limited access to news and information, television is probably the most powerful of all the media. Newspapers may claim the role of being opinion leaders among the urban elite, but they are way behind the broadcast media when it comes to influencing people in the countryside.

Thaksin himself under-scored the preponderance of television when he said half-cynically that only 20 per cent of Thai people got their news from the print media. He was responding to charges that he was behind GMM Grammy boss Paiboon Damrongchaitham's attempt to take over the Matichon and Post publishing groups last year. Of course Thaksin denied any complicity, but his implied message was not lost on those in the media.

It was an indirect way of telling his detractors that he didn't need the two newspaper groups to buttress his political hold because he already had control over daily news that reached the "80 per cent" of the population that didn't read newspapers.

While Thaksin was speaking from the point of view of a political leader adept at exploiting every social or political defect, he did underline the information gap that provided politicians with the opportunity to manipulate their electorates. Just imagine where most of the 60 million Thais get their daily information from if only 3 to 4 per cent of them buy daily newspapers - a figure based on the combined daily circulation claimed by all the newspapers in the country.

No wonder that whoever was in power made it a top priority to get all the state-owned broadcast media to toe their line. But the media-savvy Thaksin went a step further by turning them into a political mouthpiece - largely to counter the influence of the print media, which could be tamed on occasion but could not be totally subjugated. His well-calculated takeover of iTV in 2000 preceded his all-out assault on the media.

Now that Thaksin is gone and iTV is facing the prospect of going under because of the Bt100 billion it owes in unpaid concession fees plus a hefty fine, all eyes are on the TV station, with some still hoping that its status as an independent broadcaster can be restored. Several options put forth by academics and media experts are all aimed at paving the way for iTV to become either a public broadcaster along the lines of the BBC or a commercial broadcaster that has the public interest as its top priority.

While the debate over the future of iTV is helpful in getting those concerned, especially the Prime Minister's Office which owns its licence, to find a way out for the station, one should not lose sight of the big picture.

iTV is not the only broadcaster that needs to have immunity from political or business interference. In fact, in terms of popularity, iTV ranks only third or fourth among all the six TV stations. When it comes to the question of media freedom, one shouldn't be selective.

What we really need is a reform that addresses the fundamental and structural problems of the whole broadcast industry, including the more than 500 radio stations nationwide that are also under the monopoly of state agencies.

The Surayud government is trying to revive the process to select the country's first independent broadcast media regulatory body, the National Broadcasting Commission, and reintroducing the accompanying broadcast media business bill. On the surface, it seems like good news that the long-awaited process is back on track.

But in the current political atmosphere where the military has the ultimate say, it's hard to imagine a media reform process that is free from interference by those who benefit the most from the decades-long monopoly of the airwaves. It's the military that has the biggest piece of the media pie and has been most resistant to any notion that they will have to give it up.

Members of the all-powerful Council for National Security are fond of saying that it had to destroy democracy in order to save it. They should realise that the military's media empire was no less guilty than the rest for willingly singing Thaksin's tune while he was in power.

So if the generals are sincere about bringing back democracy, they need to understand that freeing broadcast media from state control (or military control for that matter) is a prerequisite. They would make a major contribution to democracy by making sure that the military stays out of the reform process.

While society needs to keep an eye on iTV, it also has to keep a close watch on the broadcast media reform to make sure that it is carried out on the basis of protecting public interest. That is the only guarantee that what happened to iTV during five years of Thaksin's rule will not happen again.

Thepchai Yong