The Surayud government made it clear that both the halt in broadcasting and impending takeover of the broadcasting frequency by the PRD would be temporary, although no specific timeframe has been given. The PM's Office was legally required to take ownership of all iTV assets at the time the concession was terminated. According to the government, the PRD will act as custodian of the broadcasting frequency until a new operator is found.

The government and its legal counsel, the Council of State, should take as much time as they need not only to disentangle the government from the legal mess at hand, but also to carefully set up new criteria to screen prospective operators and select one to run iTV as a truly independent, commercially viable television network.

To do that, the government must see to it that the iTV we have come to know - which started out as a highly independent television network but was then cowed into submission by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra - is thoroughly rehabilitated. The government must ensure that whoever is chosen to operate it in the future will live up to the principles iTV was founded on in mid-1995, which stressed editorial independence and high professional standards.

Next, the government must draw up a new agreement for any new concessionaire. It must avoid the mistake of setting excessively high concession fees and overly demanding profit-sharing terms. The annual concession fee should be set at a level commensurate to the amount private operators of other profit-oriented free TV networks are charged under concessions granted by state agencies, such as Channels 3, 5 and 7. Each of these network operators pays a concession fee that is only one-third or less the amount iTV was originally asked to pay the PM's Office.

It was therefore wrong for the government to make a blanket promise to iTV staff that the security of their jobs would somehow be guaranteed by saying that the station's future operator would be asked to rehire most or all of them.

Some iTV journalists - who were once freedom loving but who later allowed themselves to be used by Thaksin and his henchmen for propaganda - are now demanding "fairness" from the Surayud government and the Thai public. The future operator of iTV should not be forced to hire those journalists who betrayed the public's trust and failed to observe professional ethics.

After all, the worst enemy of broadcast media freedom is broadcast journalists who sell themselves cheap while at the same time pretend to advocate media freedom. The termination of iTV's concession and the temporary suspension of its broadcasts had nothing to do whatsoever with the suppression of media freedoms by the former government.

No one can prevent cynics from interpreting the government's move on iTV as another example of the Surayud government and the military junta seeking vengeance against former prime minister Thaksin, who they toppled in a coup. But it cannot be denied that the iTV saga was the outcome of despicable collaboration between the anti-democratic Thaksin regime and unethical journalists, which is just now being undone.

What the Surayud government is doing should be seen as part of a clean-up operation to rid Thai society of the culture of deceit and corruption.

Thai society must learn from this costly mistake. And all freedom-loving people in this country must bring pressure to bear on the government to do the right thing so that the new iTV, which will eventually rise from the ashes of its former incarnation, will serve the people the way it should.