Jayalath Weerakkody's resignation and all that it entails has been analyzed by the press - and all that can be said is that it is a good thing that Weerakkody had to resign. His post-party driving killed a man. Then, he or others on his behalf covered up. If the press wants to pat itself on the back and take the credit, so be it.

Sections of the press were finding it hard to bite. Some were calling it a mere accident. But, it wasn't a mere accident. It was a fatal accident. A man was killed, and by all indications, it was due to negligent driving under the influence. The cover up - now, that was quite sick.

It is hard to understand why the press has to take the rap now for exposing the whole contretemps including the sordid cover-up. Trial by media my foot. The Magistrate castigated the police for the delay in bringing the matter to court, and it is called "trial by media?'' By any stretch it wasn't a trial by media - it was a case of the media, with some help from some determined senior police officers, bringing a case to trial in Court in the first place, when everybody concerned was trying their darndest to stop that process.

To put it in perspective, to their credit, no section of the media focussed on the seamier side of the story, which was that the Commander was driving home with a fellow lady officer in the car. That fact had to be mentioned however, in the news items dealing with the story- it was part of the story, and could not be avoided. Curious, why the Air Chief just didn't tell the police he was courteously dropping a lady officer home, and be done with it. Maybe he didn't think the wife at home would buy the story. But, the story for the press was the cover-up, and it is the press - no matter which section of the press it was - that blew the cover-up, and secured justice for the family of the man who was killed.

If the press can blow the cover-up of Watergate by Nixon, and get him to resign from the American Presidency, who says the press can't blow a cover-up by the commanding officer of the Air Force of a small country? The press is not Pope. The Pope is Pope. The press is the press, and is not in the business of being charitable. It seemed that sections of the press, which criticized the exposure and the excellent job of blowing the cover-up were suffering from a simple case of envy. To put it mildly, they were a tad envious that those other than themselves got the story. Hardly a case of Christian charity one might say - - hardly a case of charity by any standards.

One columnist wrote that he sees the real crime as the cover up "driving under the influence of liquor, knocking down and killing the father of a poor family etc…' The "media focus was not so much on the cover-up'', he wrote, and "more on the sensationalism and personal weaknesses.'' This columnist ought to get his facts right, and he owes an apology to the media in general. If he really read the newspapers, he would have noticed that the entire media focus was on the cover-up and nothing else. There was no sensationalism about a "woman in the car''. Whatever was said about that particular matter was by way of reporting the story in full and not in part. Accusing the media for something it was not guilty of is a case of (to use the columnist's own words) "misreporting, mischievous reporting and unprofessional methods of news gathering….''. He should have saved the sermon for himself.
Other media critics within the media said that brighter top-brass in the armed forces were guilty of worse crimes, such as making money on arms deals. How that makes this a lesser crime, is a poser and a riddle. A man was killed, and in a hurry to empathize with the "poor Air Force commander who lost all he had worked for in a moment of indiscretion'' some media men seemed to be oblivious to this man's death. What's the life of a poor lorry cleaner compared to the Air Force commander's job, eh what? The cover-up? Oh that was just boys being boys.

Something that happened not too long ago in Denmark should indicate how well the press moves in similar matters in less sanctimonious media cultures. A Danish Minister drove home after a party. He was "after a few'', but he was alone in his car. As he approached his house, he hit a tree by the roadside. The tree and the car were damaged, but nobody saw the accident. All the Minister needed to do was to go home to bed, and nobody would have known anything about the incident. But he decided the honest thing to do was to report the "accident.''

He drove upto the nearest police station and did just that. "Just for the record'', he told the police. The police thanked him, but gave him a breathalyzer test anyway, and determined that he was driving under the influence of alcohol.

The press took up the story. They argued that the fact that he only hit a tree, and that he was honest in reporting the accident were not factors in mitigation. The story remained in the front pages for weeks ( …I hear pious Colombo columnists intoning "sensationalism"..) until a public clamour forced the Minster to resign. The Minister was a top order politician who would have almost certainly ended up as the Danish Prime Minister one day. But that was the end of his career. One too many, and a huge tree, did him in.

Relatively speaking, we have a pussyfooting press, which strangely, encourages more pussyfooting when at least some good work is done in the area of exposing corruption among high-ranking public officials. A cover-up is corruption. Maybe we do not have to hold our politicians to the stringent standards of the Danish. If we did, parliament wouldn't have any men either in government or in opposition.

But we need a good press - a bolder one, and apart from some successes such as the Weerakkody incident, the press is lame. Take the Arumugam Thondaman incident. TNL reported that Minister Arumugam Thondaman was drunk, and that he abused officers of the Borella police. The report was not contradicted at the time- but yet, it was the police, which seemed to take the rap and not Thondaman. One senior police officer took the whole issue to the level of the absurd, by saying that "being a Minister, Mr Thondaman was entitled to sit on the OIC's chair.'' If Thondaman treats all of the policemen at Borella as livestock, does that go too? Which Minister has any right to sit on an OIC's chair at a police station, despite technically ranking higher in the pecking order? It is like saying the Minister of Justice can sit on any Magistrate or District Judge's chair in Court. In this country, they will be saying that soon too. And the press - the press wouldn't be saying anything about it. Because, the press here is running for the Papacy.

By the way, in case the pious are offended, this article is not by way of "kicking the Air Force Chief when he is down.'' We all feel sorry about what happened, old buddy, but chin up - that's the way it gets in the military business. Just thank your stars your life was saved by that balloon on the steering wheel. But about this article - it is about putting the record straight about how the media should treat a story. If the media catches up with more people who are guilty of covering-up, we will all be safe, including columnists who are so pious they'd rather have journalists praying in church and not covering the beat. The day they get hit by a maniac - who goes on and covers it up - they'd awake to the reality of what the media should really be like.

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