Columns

Now and then – well more often than the phrase suggests – politicians turn their guns on the media. Which politicians turn on what media depends very much on the prevailing relationship between them. Woe unto the media that seek to comment adversely on politicians who fail to keep their faith with the public they claim to represent or cheat both the people and the state to fatten themselves and their families – immediate and extended.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe

“Criticise us if we do wrong, criticize us if we fail to keep our promises to the people.” How often have the people been misled by such pretentious words! But such sonorous sayings are heard only at election time when politicians come humbly begging for the peoples’ vote and everyone promises freedom of the press. Or immediately after they have been elected to power when that seeming humility or pretentious promise still smells like some cheap perfume.

But when power begins to corrupt or those pre-election promises quickly fade from politicians’ memories thus becoming the focus of media attention, the early words seem like a desert mirage. They seem never to have been uttered. It is then that the solicitous concern for the media is shown to be as empty as old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.
Much of the criticism of the media comes from the government, its ministers and friends and relatives planted in high office. That is natural. The government after all is responsible for running the country, it makes policy, it deals with public funds which are farmed out to ministries and state institutions and, of course, as perks and privileges to MPs to keep them contended and ‘fat’, and serve as an employment agency for family and friends.

It was somewhere in August that Minister Mangala Samaraweera who by now was finance and media minister having shed his old skin and clothed in a new one, admonished the media at an award ceremony. He told the gathering that Sri Lankan journalists were “duty bound” to report news “without fabrication”. Before the minister President Trump called “fake” news. But then Trump is more accustomed to one syllable words and four syllables are too much of a mouthful.

“It is important,” said Minister Samaraweera, “that journalists do not lower themselves to a media culture in which they attack each other and fabricate false news.”
There was an old saying that dog does not bite dog. But it seems that the media minister is worried our watchdogs will bite each other and tear themselves apart. Surely their bark is worse than their bite.

Then earlier this month the government turned its heavy artillery on the media. Speaking at a felicitation ceremony for a great journalist of yesteryear D.B. Dhanapala the President said that journalists should use their pen to give accurate and truthful information to the public without resorting to biased or false news reporting.
President Sirisena lamented that some present-day journalists were trying to protect corrupt politicians for personal gain.

Similarly, there were those who threw mud at political opponents. “Journalists must always choose what is right, respect the truth and be fair in their writing”.
The President said that he started life as a provincial correspondent for Lake House newspapers and therefore seems to have some experience in news reporting, was subdued in his criticism.

But not so Prime Minister Wickremesinghe. He was far more devastating in his accusations, charging some newspapers with false reporting intended to mislead the public with regard to the position of the maha sangha on the proposed constitutional changes. Principally he levelled two charges against the newspapers at which he fired his salvoes. One was that in reporting a decision of the Karaka Sabha of the Malwatte and Asgiriya chapters, one or all the offending newspapers had carried a front page photograph of the Ven Mahanayaka of Malwatte implying/insinuating that the Mahanayake was opposed to the changes to the constitution.

Secondly that the Mahanayake was out of the country and he had not expressed any opposition which is what the Ven Mahanayake reportedly told the prime minister when he telephoned him to inquire. He condemned the representatives of those offending newspapers who were present at the time and castigated their editors. The report in one newspaper said this: “Can you give an assurance that you will give the same prominence to my comments on this issue,” the Prime Minister asked the reporters, but none offered a response.

He said they could telephone their editors to get their reasons, but again no one accepted the challenge. That surely was a curious thing to say – I mean the newspaper. It reported that Ranil Wickremesinghe “started his career as a journalist before the Lake House newspapers were nationalised in 1973.” I was working at Lake House from 1962 first on the Ceylon Observer and a few years later on the Ceylon Daily News. I cannot recall Ranil Wickremesinghe ever working as a journalist at Lake House. He used to visit it to see his mother Nalini who was Editorial Director before Lake House was acquired by the government and also sitting at the table next to mine when he dropped into the Daily News for a chat.

I raise this for two reasons. I could not remember Ranil Wickremesinghe working at Lake House, especially because he was at the Colombo University and later completing his studies at Law College during the time referred to. In case my memory had failed me I researched his bio data carefully from different sources but could find no reference to his having been a journalist even for a short time.

Nor have I ever heard Ranil Wickremesinghe mentioning his early years as a journalist unlike President Sirisena who recalled having been a provincial correspondent. I could not find any evidence to substantiate the claim. Those who are particularly concerned about fabricating news and reporting the truth might take a peek at the state-media and offer them the advice that they proffer to others.

The second reason is this. Even a junior journalist knows that a reporter covering an event cannot give assurances how a story would be published and what prominence it would get. These are matters decided by senior staffers and the editor, depending very much on the news of the day. When a report triumphantly says that “none offered a response” or that “no one accepted the challenge” it surely shows a lack of understanding of the day to day working of a newspaper. It is not a 24-hour news cycle.

That is another reason why I think that Prime Minister Wickremesinghe was not a journalist in his early years. Had he been one he would not have made the mistake he did in asking assurances from reporters covering the event, though it seems a telling point to the average reader. But one must admit that some of the charges levelled at the media are not entirely baseless. The quality of Sri Lankan journalism has deteriorated over the years. This is mainly because of the proliferation of print and electronic media outlets.

With technological advances and easier and cheaper means of setting up news outlets political parties, politicians and entrepreneurs seeking political influence to advance their prospects rather than principles, have opened up the media space providing a multiplicity of sources. This speaks for the breathing space the government has permitted for a plethora of viewpoints to exist side by side leaving the public to draw its own conclusions with regard to the reliability of the news and views on offer and who to trust.
But this has had its downside. The sudden expansion of the news industry has thrown open the doors for more staff to feed this growth.

The result has been the influx of untrained and inexperienced persons happy to be called journalists. But the consequences are dire. How often have we heard words such as “misquoted”, “misreported” “falsified”, “falsehoods”, “out of context” and “vendetta” used to castigate the print and electronic media by those who speak first and think later as they try to wriggle out of frequent contretemps.

They are not entirely wrong. But this has become easier for those directing their accusing fingers at the media to get away with it largely because this unplanned and unprepared expansion of Sri Lanka’s media world has made it possible. One has only to read some of the plentiful websites or platforms as some call them, that exist in our cyber world (if that is the phrase for it) not to mention some print media to be struck by the spelling and grammatical errors that abound.

When the forward-looking Esmond Wickremesinghe, Ranil’s father, managed the editorial department of Lake House he recruited university graduates, especially those who had read English, economics, politics and history for their degree because he considered them more widely read. He was proved correct as their wider knowledge embellished their writing as they picked up the essentials of journalism.

Today we are caught up in a situation where inexperienced and untrained men and women hold positions that only the well-trained should. That is why some are unable to distinguish between news and comment and so inject comment into their news reports. That distinguished and long serving editor of the highly respected Manchester Guardian (later Guardian) C.P. Scott writing on the 100th anniversary of the newspaper made a remark that still stands as a beacon in the world of journalism.

He wrote “Comment is free, facts are sacred”. I am proud to have served that newspaper as a correspondent from the late 1960s and learned how crucial it was to follow that dictum. One wishes that politicians and some journalists realise the importance of this principle. It would leave much less room for critics of the media to direct their barbs at their favourite target and others to understand the distinction that made the Manchester Guardian a widely respected newspaper in the journalistic world.