A country is governed by exposes that go un-dead
What are the great un-dead journalistic stories of our time? We have more un-dead newspaper stories in this country, than there are stories that are alive and rampaging. The Ratwatte Udatalawinna story is one. The Thilanga Sumathipala story is one. The Chief Justice Diyawanna caper is one.

These are all stories that are incubated and hatched in the public eye with almost biblical fervour. At the times such stories emerge, we are told that on these stories will hang so much - - the futures of the chief characters involved in these stories, the futures of governments - - and indeed the future of the entire nation and half of the nation’s known VIPs.

But then these stories suddenly progress and mutate into the great stories that might have been. What might have happened if so and so (let us say the Udatalawinna villain) was aggressively prosecuted -- - if so and so was in fact jailed, and if so and so was in fact forced to resign his post due to his indiscretions.(That’s a different villain of course.)

But, when great stories emerge in the media fastness of this country, they come almost genetically encoded for evolving into un-dead stories. Un-dead stories are like un-dead men. Men who were so famous or notorious once upon a time but are now so much out of the public eye that the only thing the public knows about them is that they are not dead. The only memories of them that will ever be resurrected are of course when they die – and the public is duly notified.

For the moment, for instance, we know that ex President Wijetunge is un-dead, because we do not hear much about him -- and of course the deities forbid it - - we have not heard about his obituary either. (Long live D B Wijetunge.)

This kind of undead-ness we can live with -- and we all live with. For instance, when the world heard recently that Edward Heath died, we discovered that he was alive - - and that this old time Tory Prime Minister of Britain, who was mostly distinguished by his undistinguishedness, was in fact alive and had to die someday….
But can we tolerate this same kind of lingering un-deadness with newspaper stories??

For instance, will the Mahinda Rajapakse “Helping Hambanthota’’ story eventually become a great undead-story, or will it become one of those very rare stories which actually lived upto its prior potential and put paid to the Prime Minister’s career -- as the story is threatening to do with its every imagined strained sinew at the current time?

The story at this time --- by all frank assessments -- has the looks, the spitting image, of a story that’s destined to go un-dead in the near or distant future…. One thing is that the evolution of the story has that kind of kink to it, which is very special to a great many of Sri Lankan journalistic stories which end up rank un-dead.

Was Rajapakse’s “Helping Hambanthota’’ issue hived out of the morass of un-born potential newspaper stories, and displayed as a story of major destructive potential until Rajapakse threatened to ally with the JVP - - and form a new and stronger non-UNP government?? Not quite.
In other words, Rajapakse had to be a considerable irritant in the collective butt of the UNP forces, for his story to come out, as the potential corruption story of the decade, with all of its apocalyptic destructive potential.

If Rajapakse becomes a good boy, and somehow removes himself from his predicament -- - ie: quits being a thorn on the side of the UNP -- - the story has all of the potential of going suddenly un-dead, like the Diyawanna episode.

97 per cent of Sri Lanka journalistic stories are like that. They are like giant meteors that blaze across the sky, and then peter out so pathetically, that what appeared like a apocalyptic heavenly display yesterday -- the meteor I mean -- appears like a trampled ice cream cone tomorrow in the recesses of the collective memory.

Once Sri Lankan journalistic stories have served their immediate purpose -- which is usually to give somebody or some organization such a hard time momentarily that they will cut a deal with their tormentors - - - the story will join the ranks of the waking un-dead. There will be no prosecutions, no jail terms served, no resignations as the story promised so archly at the beginning.

This is not to say that these stories are ever retracted or they are ever outright disowned by those who peddled them in the first place. Heavens not - - that will be like heaven trying to retract the meteor, or a tube trying to retract the toothpaste.What happens when stories merely go un-dead is that people are told that there are more important stories, and that even though the culprit of the story is still a culprit, we have to move on. The current crop of stories, when weighed on this scale has the potential to yield a whole bumper crop of such un-dead plums.

Take the state of the presidential election for instance. Right now it’s being displayed as a giant no-brainer. Those who so much as dream on a restless night that the Presidential election might be in 2006 are scoffed at and called gullibles and simpletons who do not know their kindergarten arithmetic.

But, if this issue goes to Court -- and if it’s decided that the election is constitutionally slotted for 2006 -- the story will surely join the ranks of stories that are comprehensively un-dead -- but so much near death that for all intents and purposes they are goners.But the most important aspect of undead-stories is that they are never viewed at from the point and perspective that they should be viewed at from. Are these stories, in fact saying more about us the readers and the general public, than they are supposed to be saying about the culprits??

If we are willing to go from story to story as if we are in the white heat of our investigative hunger - - and allow a new story to blot out all memories of a previous story --- aren’t we readers nothing but pawns in a media gladiatorial contest staged to satisfy political ambitions of various artful players??

That’s not to insult media - - the various individual papers which come out with the cracking exposes at various times.

It’s to say that there are various politically interested parties that manipulate stories at various times for purposes of being paraded in the press. The intent of these manipulations is never really to snare the quarry. If so, scores of people in this country would have ended up being jailed, being removed from their posts, or being forced to resign their sinecures.

The stories serve the momentary purpose of getting somebody who is a pain in the rear, to move aside just that wee bit to remove his bulk from touching your rear end and irritating it. The readers are not suckers in this game of manipulation - - they are active participants. If they weren’t they wouldn’t allow a story to simply go un-dead. They will quit patronizing media, print or visual, which spring stories to life as if they are announcing the apocalypse, and later forget these stories without any explanation on why they are letting the culprits off the hook. The media makes the stories and bury the stories as and when they wish. Nobody asks why these stories are buried, if the culprits are sill at large -- and why various media choose to bury these stories without a whimper??

In the end these stories are like Commissions of Inquiry. All flatulence, and no emanation, and that’s just the polite way of putting it. Once in a millennial epoch - - a story in fact dies. Former Air Force Chief Weerakkoddy’s story was one such. The man was forced to resign. Mahinda Rajapakse’s story will die only if Rajapakse is one day forced to resign as a result of it.

But chances are that once the deal is cut -- once Rajapakse is safe -- the story will join the vast ranks of un-dead stories, even though it will never be resolved in the public eye whether Rajapakse actually did the wrong thing or not. Who cares about that? It’s a pesky plum of a detail in the great journalistic dish that’s been provided as a result of the story’s momentary jog around the arena of mass media consciousness.

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