Bangkok Post

The Bangkok Post is a broadsheet, English-language daily newspaper published in Bangkok, Thailand. The first issue was sold on August 1, 1946. It had four pages and cost 1 baht, a considerable amount at the time.

In a country where media censorship is common, the Bangkok Post portrays itself as being comparatively free. There are notable instances where this was clearly untrue and the newspaper has often been accused of self-censorship to avoid controversy or conflict with powerful individuals. A ubiquitous example of this is an unwillingness to criticize the Thai monarchy, which would constitute an illegal act and would be hugely unpopular as an act of lèse-majesté. Another example of self-censorship, until recent years, was an unwillingness to point out influential and corrupt individuals. Yet another example of censorship was the newspaper's failure, during the Vietnam War, to report upon bombing forays from U.S. Air Force bases in Thailand over North Vietnam and Cambodia. At the time, none of these missions received coverage in the local press.

The daily campaigns in columns and features for an austere, reformed version of Buddhism free of Thailand's traditional animist elements, which it views as superstitions, and against corruption in the official Buddhist establishment or Sangha. (Unverified, and probably unverifiable. Source needed.)

The Bangkok Post was well known for Bernard Trink's weekly Nite Owl column which covered the nightlife of Bangkok. Trink's column was published from 1966 (originally in the Bangkok World) until 2004, when it was discontinued. The newspaper has a lively letters page where expatriate and Thai regulars exchange opinions on local and international concerns, with varying degrees of accuracy and articulacy.