This article written today details killings in a Bangkok protest Sunday.
Twenty people were killed. The people protesting were considered "loyal" to the Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra.
This article has no room to go into stereotypes about Thai or southeast Asians at all. It's strictly reporting an event in which people were killed. The closest I can see this article getting to being presumptuous is in it's wording of:
"The protesters are loyal to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was overthrown in a military coup in 2006. His supporters are made up largely of the country's poor majority, according to the New York Times."I wouldn't necessarily use such an active verb (like "are loyal") because what if some protesters weren't loyal and just wanted to protest for the sake of protesting? This isn't to say I think the article meant to generalize Thai people in the slightest. Some wording could have just been edited.
The story goes to substantive material simply by avoiding speculation on the protesters, where they're from, who they are, who they work for, any of that...just simply goes to say that they protested and 20 were killed.
My Thai friend Namgyal (a freshman at the U who grew up in Thailand and moved here before high school) doesn't think this article speculates on southeast Asian stereotypes at all. He thought the article went straight to the newsworthiness, as it ought to. He was, however, surprised that there was a protest because he grew up not seeing anything violent in Thailand.
