RSF: Reporters without scruples

A Paris-based media watchdog has chastised the SLBC for not carrying LTTE leader Prabhakaran’s Heroes’ Day speech as broadcast by BBC.

Besides being none of its business this organization calls itself Reporters Sans Frontiers or Reporters Without Borders. That is a misnomer if ever there was one. It does have frontiers, boundaries it dare not cross for fear of losing some of its donors that provide the money for RSF to operate, some of whom RSF has kept under wraps until prised open. Not all of those donors that have included governments and politically dubious ‘private’ organizations, and I suppose still do, are without their own agendas that serve to undermine or even destroy sovereign governments that do not bend to their bidding.

If this column was not limited by space constraints it would have been possible to cite at length the exposes of RSF by prominent journalists and writers and news organizations which have sought to spotlight the activities of RSF which are far from the lily-white image it tries to paint of itself. Unfortunately the Sri Lankan public-and I dare say some media people-see RSF as some virtuous paladin of freedom of expression and journalists’ rights because they are not aware of the background of this organization or some of its highly questionable activities that have even bordered on trying to promote regime change by non-democratic means.

A classic example of this is its role in Venezuela in 2002 when there was an attempt to oust President Hugo Chavez. Even today the popular President Chavez is proving to be a thorn in the side of the American right and the neocons behind the George W. Bush presidency. Referring to the 2002 abortive coup against Chavez, Iganacio Ramonet, then editor of the highly respected Le Monde diplomatique wrote that RSF closed its eyes to “one of the most odious media campaigns ever launched against a democratic government.” Despite these activities it presents itself to the world as a great liberal promoter of media freedom and rights of journalists.

A few months after Ramonet’s exposure, Thierry Deronne writing about RSF”s anti-democratic role in Venezuela compared it to the work of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), an infamous press freedom group which in earlier times had formed an alliance with the corporate media to help “topple the Allende government in Chile in 1973. It is fitting then that like RSF, the IAPA describes itself as a non-profit organization dedicated to defending freedom of expression and of the press throughout the Americas.” There is much more to be said of RSF and its activities not only in Latin America and the Caribbean but in other parts of the world where, by coincidence (not so strange when one knows where some of RSF funding has come from) its position has paralleled that of US foreign policy.

My immediate concern however is the RSF stricture that the SLBC did not carry the BBC report on Prabhakaran’s speech. It said: “On November 27, reports on a speech by the leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels and a press conference by representatives of the Defence Watch website were rendered inaudible by the SLBC which is contractually obliged to retransmit the BBC’s Tamil and Sinhala programmes every day.” Judging by what RSF states here there has been no contractual violation. The RSF does not accuse the SLBC of not carrying the BBC programmes but of making them “inaudible.” I have not seen the contract mentioned and one supposes RSF has. It would appear RSF is accusing SLBC of deliberately making the programmes inaudible.

Even if it were so, I believe that the SLBC has some higher obligation and responsibility to the State and the people of Sri Lanka not to carry the speech of an individual who has declared war against the elected governments of Sri Lanka, who is threatening the territorial integrity of a sovereign state and who has committed acts of terrorism against the people of Sri Lanka. Is the first obligation of a media institution of the State to some agreement with a foreign broadcasting organization or to the country and the people it represents if that country is under threat of a secessionist group that has been outlawed as a terrorist organization including by the country in which the BBC operates?

If the BBC Sinhala service that broadcast the programme has no respect for the British Government that banned the LTTE making any promotion or advocacy of its cause an offence,it does not mean that Sri Lanka must promote its own destruction. Let us pose a question to RSF. Supposing the BBC Sinhala Service (which some have said should be renamed BBC Tiger Service) carries an obviously libellous report on the leader of a country or an internationally renowned personality, is the SLBC bound to carry it knowing only too well that it is defamatory and could be sued? Supposing the BBC Sinhala Service was to carry an item saying that RSF has accepted money from the LTTE to carry out a sustained campaign against Sri Lanka, that the RSF hierarchy and its reporters have been bribed and the possibility of legal action by RSF cannot be ruled out, is the SLBC obliged to repeat that accusation?

The BBC Sinhala Service has been particularly detrimental to this country. If so why should the SLBC be a party to such acts that are aimed at undermining the state? This contract cannot go on in perpetuity. When the time comes for renewal the SLBC must insist on its right to delete what it considers objectionable especially if it is harmful to the sovereignty and integrity of the state like being obliged to rebroadcast the speech of a person who is trying to destroy the state as we know it. If it is not allowed then scrap it.

Perhaps RSF can educate us on this. Did French state radio broadcast the speeches of Adolf Hitler when his juggernaut was rolling across Europe? Did the Voice of America broadcast the speeches of Fidel Castro who the CIA tried to assassinate on 17 occasions? RSF cannot be ignorant of the operations of Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe mainly out of West Germany and elsewhere at the height of the Cold War and generally funded by the CIA. Did they allow freedom of expression with views critical of the US and the western world freely aired? I was in West Berlin for several months during those critical years and I know how much free expression was permitted.

RSF has now picked Sri Lanka as one of its targets as it had honed in on Cuba, Venezuela and others. It is time that RSF reins in before somebody really removes its fig leaf.