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Sunday, September 18, 2005
The head of GMM Grammy in Thailand has backed off from his attempts to take over the leading Thai newspaper, Matichon. In a statement on Friday, Mr Paiboon Damrongchaitham announced he would reduce his stake in the paper from 32% to 12%.
The attempted takeover has drawn widespread criticism from journalists, academics, and democracy activists. Mr Paiboon is known to be close to the Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, and many argued his control of the well-respected paper would have a chilling effect on free speech in the country.
Despite announcing the planned sale of more than a third of his holding in the paper, Mr Paiboon will still have a sufficiently large share to command a place on the board. Academic, Anusorn Srikaew, the dean of Rangsit University's Faculty of Communication Arts, suggested that GMM Grammy's ambitions had just been shelved and that they would again increase their stake in the paper at some point in the future.
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This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.
Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.
Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.
The text of this article has been released into the public domain. In the event that this is not legally possible, this article may be used for any purpose, without any condition, unless such conditions are required by law. This applies worldwide. Copyright terms on images, however, may vary, so please check individual image pages prior to duplication.
