The threat of closure looms over the news website at the centre of a criminal defamation case launched by the navy, regardless of a court verdict due next month.
Under pressure: Alan Morison and Chutima Sidasathian face the prospect of closing their news website.
Phuketwan editor Alan Morison said financial pressures would make it difficult for the site to continue operating in its current format, despite the surge in publicity and web traffic the case has brought.
“It’s difficult to gauge whether being sued is good or bad [in terms of publicity], but at this stage it certainly looks as though the navy is going to achieve what it wanted — to silence Phuketwan,” Morison said.
The Australian national and his Thai colleague, Chutima Sidasathian, stand accused of defaming the navy by republishing a Reuters story in 2013. The story, which later won a Pulitzer prize, implicated Thai authorities in the trafficking of Rohingya migrants.
The trial, decried by a raft of international rights groups and soured by the prosecution’s unexplained absence for the majority of it, wrapped up last month after three days of testimony. A verdict is expected on Sept 1, with both Morison and Chutima facing up to seven years in jail if found guilty.
Morison vowed to appeal any conviction, saying “the fight will only end when our names are cleared”.
While reluctant to begin writing a eulogy for his website, at age 67 and with the life savings he uses to keep the site afloat now dwindling, Morison said he has little choice but to ponder the future. Without a major investor, he said, the prospects are bleak.
Yet the website has already survived longer than it might have without the navy’s legal action. “Oddly enough, when the policeman knocked on our door in December 2013 [to inform us of the charges] … we were thinking about what to do about closing Phuketwan,” Morison said.
“So the fact is that the case has inspired us to stay in business for an extra couple of years. How could we stop?”
If it does go offline, Morison noted that Phuketwan would leave behind a legacy as a news outlet that punched well above its weight on issues beyond the scope of its relatively small audience.
“As small island journalists we have ended up at the centre of two big issues,” he said, referring to their ongoing defamation case and Phuketwan’s role in exposing the human trafficking trade in Thailand. “That’s not something we ever sought, but now that we’ve found ourselves there we’re just doing our best to make sure we get the best result.”
Despite the recent international attention on human trafficking, Morison said it would be hard to pull the plug knowing that the job is not yet done.
“We would be delighted to walk away knowing that there are no more boats coming down the coast,” Morison said. “I wish I could say that the job is done with some certainty … [but] the results for those migrants are still not clear.”
At the local level, he said he feared for Phuket’s future without an independent outlet to challenge what he said was the “Jaws-like” mentality of business owners on the island determined to gloss over inconvenient truths.
“It would be terrible if Phuket were left without analysis that’s not based on the business values of those involved,” he said.
“The problems on the island should be dealt with rather than covered up.”