It's dangerous enough when the government thinks it owns all the state-run television and radio stations and is determined to dictate their content, directly or otherwise.

 It's even more frightening when the prime minister, on the spur of the moment, orders Channel 11 to allot one hour every working evening for official spokesmen to launch an airwave war against the government's "enemies".

Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej apparently made that sudden decision after he had spent one hour last Saturday night watching ASTV, a private satellite outlet that has been providing live broadcasts of the rallies of the People's Alliance for Democracy.

The PAD's strong verbal attacks, he charged, were all distortions that had to be corrected. He said he could no longer allow such "lies" to be fed to the public day in day out. ("I first thought it was going to be only once a week," he lamented.)

Samak's solution was his signature eye-for-an-eye tactic. He immediately ordered Channel 11- renamed National Broadcasting of Thailand or NBT soon after he took office,to make it sound somewhat more professional - to set aside the time slot between 10 to 11pm so that the government could hit back at the PAD's accusations.

The decision apparently came so suddenly that even his chief spokesman said the new programme had yet to be given a name - and the host(s) could be one or more of the government spokesmen.

As it turned out, the new "talk-back" programme was slightly amended - and a team of pro-government, anti-PAD activists including the government's deputy spokesman, took over the programme, prompting the original programme's hosts to issue an angry statement against "government' interference".

PTV hosts on air on NBT

Whatever the pretence about turning Channel 11 into a "professionally-run" outlet to "provide prompt, accurate and reliable news and views to the public", when it was re-christened NBT it was thrown to the wind.

That line of propaganda was, of course, never convincing in the first place. It was merely a question of when - not whether -  Samak and the then PM's Office minister Jakrapob Penkair would let the cat out of the bag.

The pro-government groups were trying to make the move subtle and less controversial by reviving PTV, another satellite outlet, to confront ASTV head-on. But Samak apparently decided on his own that the information war was simply too big for PTV to handle. He needed to bring out the big gun. And because he had always considered NBT his own, there was little hesitation in the premier stumbling into another major blunder.

Samak has insisted all along that the current Constitution, enacted in 2007, was designed by the charter writers as a "trap" to subvert him and his ruling PPP. Now, with his decision to use Channel 11 to embark on an airwave war against his critics, the premier has been ensnared by his own trap.

Somehow, it has never occurred to him that state-owned media don't belong to the government. The current charter makes it very clear that politicians aren't supposed to impose their will and personal whims on official media, which is supposed to operate under a policy of serving the public interest rather than serving selfish political ends.

By forcing Channel 11, which is funded by tax-money, to allocate specific time slots for the government to attack its critics, the premier is running the risk of violating the spirit incorporated in the constitution of upholding professional freedom in the state-owned media against undue political interference.

The premier also displayed his total lack of understanding of the role of a public service broadcasting station when he complained bitterly in his Channel 11 talk show last week that TPBS's news style wasn't to his liking because "as soon I took office, they ran a series on the October 6 incident" that didn't shed too positive a light on Samak's role at the time.

 He also showed displeasure over a TPBS news report explaining how Japan's tough prosecutors had managed to pursue a major corruption case 30 years ago that ended with a court conviction to send a former Japanese prime minister to jail. The same Tokyo Special Prosecutor's Office is probing a report that a Japanese contractor paid bribes to senior officials of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to win a major contract. The incident was said to have taken place when Samak was Bangkok Governor.

Samak said, in an obviously threatening tone, in his programme on Sunday about TPBS: "This is a station that gets Bt2 billion from the government. And these are the kinds of stories they do."

The implication was that a publicly-funded media outlet shouldn't be critical of the government, much less the prime minister himself.

Samak doesn't realise that public funding is aimed at doing public good, and is not to be made subservient to the powers that be. In fact, the whole rationale behind the creation of a public service broadcasting station is to serve the country by reporting the news without fear or favour of the political class.    

Samak already has his hour-long Sunday talk show on Channel 11 - which is a forum for his angry outbursts against anyone who thinks he is not up to the mark. That - and the fact the opposition hasn't been granted any specific time slot on the same station - has been a subject of intense debate in the past few months.

He may not realise it, but Samak's main weakness is his penchant for political squabbles, especially over trivial, personal issues. He has got all his national priorities wrong. Instead of shifting his focus to the more urgent and serious problems of the economy, Samak has turned all his attention to sparring with his detractors,  trying in vain in shake off the image of being Thaksin Shinawatra's nominee.

The supreme paradox is: his obsession with his own political survival will prove to be the cause of his imminent demise.