Columns

Whenever I watch TV in Colombo especially those seemingly endless political debates that almost every station thinks it must programme to be seen as au fait, most participants come armed with reams of newspaper articles and clippings. They are put to such productive use, at times given the importance of some great religious texts, in the course of what purports to be enlightening political discourse.

How much importance is attached to readings from newspaper articles or shorter quotes from them depends on how much veracity political participants attach to what they cite to buttress their arguments.

This was particularly so during the two elections last year as political parties contending for power vied with each other to convince increasingly skeptical, if not disgusted, citizens that a vote for their respective party symbols would signal the birth of a new dawn, a new era for Sri Lanka.

Such programmes do provide unintended humour and unanticipated entertainment to a dubious public as politicians or their hangers-on, scream at each other at decibel levels that threaten to disable at least one of the five senses but contribute little in the way of a stimulant to enlightened debate. The educational qualifications – or lack thereof – of the legislators of the last parliament (previously mentioned) or those that sought refuge in the one that was to follow provided ample proof that these TV shows with a variety of talking heads of one hue or another could hardly approach the intellectual discourse of the ancient conventicles of Socrates even if some deluded themselves that their contributions added to the storehouse of human knowledge.

Despite the general absence of thought-provoking debate except when intelligent and knowledgeable participants joined in, there is a point that has been overlooked in the general melee that these free-for-all talk shows turn out to be. That is the importance participants attach to earlier media reportage and opinion during the couple of hours spent in argument and counter-argument.

When the media serves their interests these vehicles of modern communication are hailed, their right to freedom of expression assured and the curtailment, if not the deprivation of that right castigated with all the vehemence the new messiah’s of an unfettered media could muster.

But as soon as the media steps out of line – from the perspective of those who once defended the faith but later assumed power – and do not adhere to the path of servile subservience politicians and politically-partial state officials expect of them despite the many homilies to a free media publicly declared at convenient moments and internationally dedicated days, the media is cast in an adversarial mould.

Threats abound and growls of protest are heard from quarters that only months earlier vowed before the public to permit and safeguard media freedom which the incumbent rulers had curtailed or destroyed. This transformation is not a reflection of fault lines in the media of which there are no doubt many, but the general mindset of politicians and official lackeys.

For all the pompous pronouncements that they will permit criticisms of government and that their administrations would be open to public gaze and scrutiny, what is really expected of the media is a kind of servility that eschews careful examination and analyses of actions, taken or intended, by politicians and their officials.

So we have President Sirisena accusing some websites of distortion and creating a wrong image of the country outside. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has turned his ire on some newspapers, editors and journalists. Such criticism of the media is nothing new. Successive governments and political leaders have trained their guns on newspapers and publishers that would not bow to the diktats of those in power, particular political parties or toe the prescribed line.

This is not the occasion to delve too much into historical detail. Yet it might be recalled that Mrs. Bandaranaike’s coalition government of the early 1960s carried out a relentless campaign against the Lake House group, egged on by her coalition partner the LSSP and supported by the pro-Moscow Communist Party.

Perhaps Ranil Wickremesinghe was too young to remember that it was his father Esmond that master-minded the campaign against the press bill tabled by the Bandaranaike government and narrowly defeated it in the ensuing vote in parliament. Mrs. Bandaranaike resigned forcing the 1965 election.

During UNP Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake’s time he clamped down on the widely read Communist Party newspaper “Aththa” though my own feeling is that Dudley Senanayake was goaded into taking this step by overbearing right-wing UNPers and key officials notably in the Ministry of Defence and External Affairs.

In the early 1970s Mrs. Bandaranaike’s government took over Lake House and shut down the Independent Newspapers published by the MD Gunasena family. Later that decade J.R. Jayewardene took over the Times group under the Business Acquisition Act justifying the action with some excuse which hardly legitimised the acquisition.

So despite numerous promises on media freedom our political parties have sullied themselves with vendettas against the media and none of them have emerged from their petty grievances that generated media meddling, smelling like an attar of roses.   I recall the past and present having followed as much as possible the recent vulgar brouhaha in Hambantota where the Navy Commander acted in a manner that would never have happened in the UK where force commanders and senior officers maintain the dignity of their services and ranks.

Had such an incident ever happened in the UK where a service chief is accused of physical violence and abuse of a journalist – or any member of the public – he would have been roasted by the media not to mention parliament. But then in our Sri Lanka it seems leaders are too scared to act against armed forces personnel even when they act in violation of the law and could even be implicated in crimes that should be investigated and dealt with impartially and free of political interference.

There are two separate issues here. Those who try to defend the action of the navy commander as seen on the video try to blur the two happenings in the obvious hope that the first will justify the second. The first incident is the blockade of the ships by protesting port workers. The navy had been summoned to breach that blockade and free the ships from what was termed an act of piracy. The second was the navy commander’s treatment meted out to a freelance correspondent.

The second incident is connected to the first but is a separate happening. What the navy and others standing by the commander are trying to do is to justify the second by stating that the first was a task mandated by the International Ship and Ports Facility Security Code.

I doubt – and I am open to correction here – the code states anywhere that the Competent Authority is entitled to use foul and abusive language or even some physical force to deal with an enterprising and perhaps over-zealous journalist obviously interested in getting a better story than his competition.

Minister Sarath Fonseka one-time General and now Field Marshal suggests that the navy commander only “pushed” the journalist out of the security circle. Does it need a service chief to evict a single person when so many naval ratings are seen around? Others who have seen this particular video and have clearer eyesight seem to think it was more than a push. Just imagine what might have happened if push came to shove! Quite interestingly Minister Fonseka is strangely silent about the use of distasteful language which others watching the video have clearly heard.

President-elect Donald Trump called some of his racy remarks unearthed and publicly aired by his political opponents as “locker room” talk. I wonder what the navy chief’s rather limited vocabulary would be called – “mess talk”? That would be a real mess wouldn’t it especially since the story reverberates in international media circles and the promised inquiry into the incident, like many other inquiries into various shenanigans such as attacks on night clubs, are quietly buried at sea.

There is of course this little business of the security circle or security cordon or whatever the men in uniform (and some out of them) would like to call them. Being a novice in these kind of security manouvres unlike others who write so authoritatively about them, I keep wondering about the effectiveness of this security cordon if it was meant to protect the ships and the attempts to free them from any hostile force or forces. If that was the intention of the cordon then for a single person armed with nothing more than a video camera to penetrate that cordon surely does not speak too much of its effectiveness as a barrier to keep the unwanted out.

As Europe drifted into the Second World War, the French built a defensive line against a possible invasion by the Germans. Called the Maginot Line after the French minister who ordered it built, and believed to be strong enough to withstand invading forces, it proved vulnerable, as students of military history will remember. The ‘Hambantota Line’ must have been constructed of paper seeing that a single person penetrated it. Was this what the navy was really trying to prevent the public from knowing?

To make matters worse the director-general of government information sticks his oar into the troubled waters off of the south and comes up with some nonsense about the journalist violating ethical practices in covering a volatile situation. What the man violated and what ethical practices the DG was referring to remained unmentioned, unless they were unmentionable.  Given the “volatile situation” the government referred to surely this would have been the time for the director-general himself to have stated clearly and categorically where the journalist had faulted. For the department that supposedly provides information – and government information at that – it maintained a deafening silence without trying to clear the air by providing information rather than pontificating on media theory.

However the next day the DG and possibly his motley crew recover from their slumber and plead mea culpa at the hurried release the previous day. But had the panjandrums in that department or ministry given it some thought they would have realised this had little to do with “ethical” practices. The journalist might be guilty of a professional mistake but not an ethical one.   Even the Deputy Minister of Mass Media defended the journalist who was manhandled showing that there were other views prevailing in government circles and not just the view circulated by the navy.  So the public waits with bated breath to read the promised inquiry report. May be it will see the light of day unlike the light years we had to wait for the Chilcot report on Iraq. Here is an opportunity to blame the media again. When the navy was trying to do a national service and retrieve the country’s image the interfering media had created an unnecessary situation. That might be a good song to sing but the lyrics seem terribly threadbare.