March 12 2007
Nana Plaza bible-bashers hoodwink BBC's Kate McGeown

Helpless child sex-slaves make for a great story but how does an ambitious BBC foreign correspondent track down these mythical creatures in Nana Plaza amongst a fun-loving army of Anna Nichole Smith wannabes?
Most sensation-seeking journalists would just shag a few prostitutes and make something up but, to add weight to her clichéd portrayal of Nana Plaza as Bangkok's very own Heart of Darkness, the BBC's Kate McGeown wanted nothing less than a firsthand account.
A regular at Bangkok's Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC), Kate McGeown has been knocking around Asia for years and knows perfectly well that Nana Plaza is just a run-of-the-mill bunch of girly bars. Her male colleagues regard the place as a second home.
She could have interviewed just about anyone sitting at the FCC bar or simply walked across the road to investigate the place for herself but, instead, McGeown bases her exposé on the unchallenged testimony of a PR woman in the paid employment of a bunch of donation-seeking religious wackos.
Is this just a typical example of the lazy and incompetent Thailand reporting that we've come to expect or is Kate McGeown deliberately trying to mislead her readers?
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6360603.stm
The interviewee, Khun Pim, is a needy but timid single mum who failed to thrive in Nana Plaza's lucrative but highly competitive sex trade so she joined a religious cult instead. You know that the bible-bashers are pulling her strings but, despite all this, she comes across as being honest and straightforward.
Pim disliked her job but she was neither coerced nor abused during her time at Nana Plaza. McGeown must have been terribly disappointed. Even though she'd compromised her journalistic integrity by seeking out the most tainted source imaginable, all she got in return was a mundane tale about a crazy Japanese bloke who once followed Pim down the street.
McGeown continues this futile line of enquiry with a question that must have gone something along the lines of "but surely one of your friends was gang-raped?"
My friend once went with a guy to his hotel room, and found lots of other men there too. She wouldn't tell me what happened after that, but she was shaking for a long time when she got back home.
The ambiguity of this answer is perfect and the details are impossibly tantalising. She implies that a gang rape occurred without even mentioning it. I'm having a tough time believing that this masterpiece of melodramatic subtlety came direct from the mouth of a former bargirl.
McGeown also attributes this dubious quote to Khun Pim.
Many customers prefer children or young girls.
When the inevitable prompting came about "customers who like 'em young" Khun Pim might well have said "many customer like young girl" because "young girl" is a bargirl expression meaning any woman under 25 but I find it hard to believe that she ever said "many customers prefer children" because it simply isn't true and the go-go bars of Nana Plaza don't employ any.
My suspicion is that McGeown took a few liberties with the Thai/English translation in order to equate paid sex with paedophilia - a debating technique commonly employed by farang women with an axe to grind.
If I were McGeown's editor, I'd insist on reviewing her "paedophile paradise" interview tape. The BBC's reputation for fair and unbiased reporting wasn't built on crude sensationalism and fabrication.
That job belongs to Fox News.
Unless the BBC conducts an internal enquiry, we'll never know what Khun Pim really said to Kate McGeown but we can investigate the motives of the religious maniacs who brought them together.
McGeown gives them a generous plug in her article.
A friend of mine told me about Nightlight [a Christian charity offering training and employment for former sex workers, through a jewellery-making business]. Since I've started working there, my life is so much better.
Nightlight is affiliated to the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada but its head office is located in Los Angeles. In Bangkok, it hides behind the anonymity of a PO box.
The group's website paints a benevolent picture of their tireless work improving the lives of the "women and children working in the bar areas of Nana/Sukhumvit" but the final item in each list of good works reveals their true agenda.
To introduce women and children to the love and mercy of Jesus Christ, to disciple them into a strong faith as people who will then impact their communities.
In other words, they're here to convert the savages.
Pentecostals regard the Bible as a statement of fact but what sets them apart from other Evangelical Christians is the belief that that the Holy Spirit possesses their converts upon baptism, resulting in supernatural phenomena such as speaking in tongues, prophecy, miraculous healings and signs from God. Their religion owes as much to Voodoo as it does to Christianity.
Nightlight's February newsletter boasts:
Aye, who was diagnosed with lung cancer was prayed for and now her diagnosis has changed to asthma.
It's a miracle! Why don't you write a story about that, Kate, or do you only quote these charlatans when their horseshit reinforces your own prejudices?
(Spotted by Dicer)
Footnote
Kate McGeown is actually a first rate journalist and I'm sure she knew perfectly well that the interview she conducted and the article derived from it was a complete crock. My headline was probably too kind to her. She wasn't hoodwinked at all.
Just to prove it, here's an excellent article that she wrote about illicit trade on the Thai-Burma border.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6430515.stm
Notice how sceptical she is about her principal interviewee's answers.
[Posted to News by David]
*** THE COMMENT FORUM IS NOW CLOSED ***
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