“Tourists could face death penalty for taking selfies as planes land next to Phuket beach,” reads a headline on the front page of the ABC News’ website today.
Indeed, it was the perfect click-bait story to scare readers and go viral, especially when the beach is a popular #PhotoOpp spot for Instagrammers hoping to go viral with their own photos of low-flying planes.
Unfortunately for the readers of media outlets that reported the story as such, it is far from accurate.
While airport officials did recently establish a new exclusion zone in Phuket’s Mai Khao beach — that happens to be located right next to the popular tourist island’s airport runway — those that trespass will not face capital punishment, as widely reported by international media including ABC News, Dail Mail, and South China Morning Post.
In reality, trespassers will most likely face a fine.
“That is a misinterpretation by international media that we are also trying to clear up… We’ve simply marked out the new “safety zone” that we prohibit tourists entering for their own safety, “ Apichet Buatong, the secretary to Deputy Director of Phuket International Airport (corporate side) Kanyarat Sutipattanakit told Coconuts Bangkok this afternoon.
These zones are reportedly marked out by two fences.
Tourists and locals that live within a 9-kilometer radius of the beach are also not allowed to fly drones and shine flashlights or lasers at planes as it has been reported to distract the pilots, he added.
Apichet said that harsh penalties will only be served if an airport official were to be injured as a result of one’s actions if the court determines it to be a form of distraction.
Even then, capital punishment is only reserved for the most extreme cases in which an airport official was severely harmed or died, he said.
So yes, while we agree that it is still a harsh punishment, it is far more reasonable than getting the death penalty just for taking a selfie, as was heavily implied by many other media outlets.
In this age where all online media (including us) are chasing viral traffic, there is a strong temptation for outlets to aggregate stories like “death penalty for selfies” without doing the kind of basic fact-checking that could potentially ruin that wonderfully click-baity headline. But we think people probably expect more, so here we are again.
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