News with Human Touch

NEWS WITH HUMAN TOUCH

- Ms. Veerawan Vararuth, Head of Print and Radio News Department, Thai News Agency, Talks with UNIS About her Career and the Media in Thailand

"Reporting of news with a human touch is the most important and challenging work in journalism", says Ms. Veerawan Vararuth, Head of Print and Radio News Department, Thai News Agency, Mass Communications Organization of Thailand. (MCOT). "And you have to like your work to do it well", she notes. Ms. Vararuth is known as a news woman who not only likes her work but also devotes her life to her career. As a journalist, she plays an important role in reporting on social issues in Thailand.

After finishing her B.A. from the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, she studied in the United States to complete her Master's Degree in English Literature and Communication.

At MCOT, Ms. Vararuth first worked as a translator and gradually became a journalist. "Even though I was not a reporter, but a translator, I volunteered to cover the news." And now she has become the head of the department. It wasn't easy, she says, because the so-called "glass ceiling" exists very much in the news world.

As for her private life, Ms. Vararuth says that with three children she wished she had more time for her family as she usually works late on most evenings. But, she explains, "I try to separate work and career and the way I raise my children. It is the quality of time that matters."

Asked what she thinks is the most important role of the media in Thailand today, Ms. Vararuth says that the media must take responsibility for its reporting and should not be biased. "The media should not mislead the public in any way. It must tell the truth and should not deviate from that. The media should also try to develop itself."

Ms. Vararuth has been invited by the United Nations to attend several international meetings, including the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and 1995 Copenhagen Social Summit in Denmark. As a journalist whose work relates to many UN issues, Ms Vararuth considers social, economic and environmental issues the most important because they concern all human beings. " I think the UN agenda goes to the heart of what affects most people."

However, the issue of population control in Thailand has had some interesting social effects, Ms. Vararuth says noting that the number of children born to every Thai woman has dropped to 1.3 "In the north, particularly the young working people aged 20-40, are dying because of AIDS. It's quite an alarming figure, if the government still clings to the population control policy. Some schools in Chiang Mai have to close because there are no students."

Ms. Vararuth produces a radio programme, "Hotline", with BBC, which is broadcast daily from 18.10 to 18.45, and an international news analysis programme broadcast in Thai on Sundays from 20.30 to 21.30 p.m, both on 100.5 FM .

Asked for her opinion of the quality of the media in Thailand today, Ms Vararuth notes that in all societies there are good and bad journalists. She adds that journalists can always improve themselves with better research. As readers of news, she points out, we should not be discouraged by bad journalists but carefully choose our sources of information.