CHOGM: Unprofessional media arrangements
View(s):Some days back, when the Business Times wanted pictures of foreign business leaders attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOMG), a top official said he would try to get it from the Commonwealth Secretariat’s London headquarters but that it would take a couple of hours!
No fault of his anyway. The problem lies squarely with the media authorities in the country who, as the media has bitterly learnt, has no clue on how to organise local and international coverage of an international conference of this magnitude.
Mind you, Sri Lanka was expecting 54 heads of states though the numbers have been lowered. Furthermore 4,000 plus delegates, heads of states included, are attending the meeting, by far the largest gathering after the 1976 Non Aligned Summit in Colombo which was far better organised. Notable developments then were the construction of the BMICH and Summit Flats (for delegates), and widening of the Colombo-Katunayake highway.
Just days before the events begin on November 11, journalists here and abroad are scrambling for information and facilitation with the Media Ministry and its lackadaisical Information Department lost in a mountain of paper and logistics!
On request, the comprehensive agenda of the Commonwealth Business Forum (CBF) was given to this newspaper by coordinating officials and is published on Page 3, when it should have been handed over to all media by now. The media should have been regularly fed with press releases and other information at least a month before the conference begins. This is particularly so in the case of Sri Lanka confronting many issues overseas vis-à-vis the human rights discourse.
While the flow of information on the arrangements and on visiting heads of state and business leaders has been woefully inadequate, focus of the media and other authorities has just been on logistics support, import of equipment, vehicles, etc. By this time, a fully-fledged media centre should have been operative, manned by staff competent to handle and respond fast to queries from the media.
It would have been a great opportunity to profile Sri Lanka – rather than wait for the last minute (when the conference begins) if these structures were in place. As of now, the information flow is fragmented with different ministries and departments doing their own thing – particularly the President’s Office, the External Affairs Ministry and the Media Ministry/Information Department. Rather than be the pivot of the entire media outlay of CHOGM and leading the way, the last named institutions have become mere appendages of other state institutions involved in CHOGM.
Local conferences with an international participation have seen far better organisation of the media and its needs.
The chaos in media organisation was first seen at the initial briefing on the CBF at the Ministry of External Affairs, some weeks ago. Long delays in starting the meeting without an apology, not enough space in the room where the meeting was held, etc was the order of the day. The ‘poor’ arrangements were repeated at the next media briefing when the mikes failed.
Even at a briefing to the media on Friday on arrangements at the media centre to be located at the BMICH, officials were either ‘lost’ to respond to questions from journalists. There was also no proper response to the question, “is there a telephone number/contact we can call for information?”
Sri Lanka has plenty of expertise in the state and private media to help organise a media centre that would match the standards or even be better than media centres during other CHOGMs’. That expertise could have been obtained through the Sri Lanka Press Institute which represents the entire media fraternity in the country.
The Government spends millions of US dollars on hiring foreign PR agencies to profile the country’s image abroad but can’t get its act together here in developing an efficient and effective media centre/unit to meet the pre-conference needs of journalists; hundreds locally and abroad.
Even at this late stage, the Government must wake up, bring in expertise, a trouble-shooter and get the arrangements in fit order to handle coverage of an international conference with so many heads of state attending.
What a shame if this situation worsens when over 500 foreign journalists arrive to cover the summit, and are looking for ‘positive’ stories. Embarrassing is not the word if the world’s media is at your doorstep and cannot be used effectively, and at no cost!
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