Columns

In recent days, we have read or heard several comments and commentaries that speak of official attempts to curb the journalistic activities and freedom of the local media. Admittedly media freedom is not an absolute right unlike the right to life and the freedom from torture.

It is an issue that I have discussed and debated as a participant at numerous conferences and seminars and on other occasions in Sri Lanka and abroad over the years at events organised by international and regional media and press freedom organisations. They have been increasingly concerned with overt and covert attempts by governments to clamp down on the freedom of the media and, by implication, freedom of speech.

In many countries where media freedom is permitted, the media regulates themselves to stop governments from intruding into the functioning of the media which formulate their own rules and regulations and draw up codes of ethics intended to ensure accuracy in reporting, fairness and protect the rights of the public.

That does not mean, of course, the media adheres closely to its own code of conduct and refrains from violating its own regulations meant to safeguard the reputation and fairness of the media. A classic example of the crass violation of media regulations in the UK was the telephone-tapping scandal by the “News of the World” tabloid owned by the Rupert Murdoch group that led to the appointment of the Leveson public inquiry set up by the David Cameron government in 2012.

The inquiry was to be in two parts. The first dealt with “the culture, practices and ethics of the press, including contacts between the press and politicians and the press and the police; it is to consider the extent to which the current regulatory regime has failed and whether there has been a failure to act upon any previous warnings about media misconduct.”

It is important to note that one of the key lines of inquiry concerned any nexus between the press and politicians and the press and the police which we know exists in many countries including Sri Lanka. They lead a symbiotic existence and it is no secret that favours and money change hands.

While it would take too much time and space to relate some of the findings of the Leveson report it might be said that there was sufficient evidence to expose the social and other contacts between media moguls and upper crust media personalities, there were also connections between key political figures including the prime minister and some cabinet ministers and media personalities which led to political figures resigning and the chief of the Metropolitan Police and his deputy throwing in the towel.

This raises a key issue about the validity and reliability of any inquiries. The Leveson inquiry unearthed sufficient evidence that led to the resignation of the highest in London’s Metropolitan Police and his deputy and others.

It exposed the links between top politicians especially those in government and ministers who were connected with Rupert Murdoch’s negotiations to purchase a major TV station and senior officials of Murdoch’s organisation “News International” that led to some senior executives and journalists ending up in court.

I cannot remember an occasion when commissions or committees inquiring into the journalistic or commercial affairs of Sri Lanka’s media ever finding government politicians or officials serving the government being hauled up before the inquiry or censured for wrongdoing.

It would appear that the government can do no wrong and it is only the media–especially those critical of the authorities and exposed–that are found guilty of violating their ethics and face opprobrium or punishment.

It is curious that while the media and journalists are found wanting, politicians cannot do wrong they do not do wrong and so are beyond reproach. It would appear that politicians and crooked officials live in an illusory world where they live exemplary lives. Nobody is guilty of graft, of taking bribes, of creaming off several percent from the top. Nobody it appears fiddles public funds and resources, nobody cuts down valuable trees for timber or destroys our ecosystem, nobody-politicians, state officials and enforcers of the law do not transgress the law. Well such persons are not heard of, or are not found guilty unless they belong to another camp.

But it would seem listening to lawmakers and administrators they are so pure of character that moral turpitude is a phrase that does not exist in their vocabulary unless it is directed at the media or media practitioners.

It is not that that the media are not responsible for concocting news stories and some of its practitioners would do well in the manufacturing industry. But it would require an extremely elastic imagination to believe that those who persistently point the finger of accusation at the media in general are so pure of heart and clean of mind that they are require no moral dry clean.

It is curious that accusations of false reporting, fake news, salacious remarks etc are mainly, if not only, directed at the media and particularly at social media and web sites. It is mostly true that the so-called social media and web sites do commit such errors because they do not have journalistically trained and competent staff and no “gate keepers”, as we call them, to check the veracity of what their writers churn out. At times deliberate harm is done to harm others considered enemies or to spread manufactured falsehoods as politicians often do (Read: The lies of Donald Trump: A Taxonomy” by James P Pfiffner).

Why is it assumed–if that is what it is–that politicians tell no lies. Why is it that only the media-deliberately or by error–are accused of “fake news” and not politicians? Is this desire to throttle the media partly because politicians, officials and others do not want their activities exposed for fear of public opprobrium or worse?

Surely the public would like to know how many politicians who complain of media abuse actually have interests in the social media and websites that engage in personal attacks and fake news mainly directed at their political enemies and opponents.

Could they confirm they have never uttered falsehood in their political careers to denigrate political opponents and personal enemies? Let those who have not sinned cast the first stone. Otherwise have others throw stones at the accusers.

 (Neville de Silva is a veteran
Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor, Diplomatic Editor and Political Columnist of the Hong Kong Standard before moving to London where he worked for Gemini News Service. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London before returning
to journalism.)