Shaming the media the new parlour game

By Neville de Silva

Whatever this government might say about maintaining the freedom of the press and indeed safeguarding it, nobody really believes it.

That is the sad truth and the sooner this is realised the healthier will be the relationship between the government and the media, both in the country and in the wider world. The problem is the yawning gap-and still widening- between the words and deeds of the administration which means politicians and officials alike, and the fanciful rhetoric that emanates from their mouths like sugar to coat the bitter pills.

So much so that the challenges facing the Sri Lanka media and the threats to media freedom in general and to practicing journalists in particular are now not just the substance of reports by international media bodies and other concerned organisations. The issues are being discussed openly at meetings abroad with the participation of international media and human rights organisations.

This has unfortunately opened the flood gates to the LTTE and its supporters to castigate the government publicly on much wider political issues, conveniently forgetting ( or wanting others to forget) that the LTTE's own commitment to media freedom and dissent is far worse than that of the administration.

Why it is possible for critics of the government, particularly the LTTE and its supporters to get away with it, is that the government lacks credible individuals to articulate its case- difficult at the best of times- which is becoming even more difficult because government spokesmen in Colombo, politicians and officials, keep shooting themselves in the foot with such gay abandon, defeating their own purpose.

Last week I attended a meeting in London organised by the Exiled Journalists Network at which two Sri Lankan journalists (one who had been abducted and later released) and international media and human rights organisations were the principal participants. The subject was "Professionalism, Peace Reporting and Journalists' safety in Sri Lanka."

If I say I was disappointed by the direction, substance and tenor of the discussion held at the House of Commons it is because the chair lost control of the meeting and permitted, wide-ranging political talk much of it extraneous to the issue- so the immediate problems facing journalists and journalism in Sri Lanka were lost in a forest of political verbiage.

An intervention by the defence attaché of the Sri Lanka High Commission did not further the debate or cause and only provided some superficial camaraderie. The first thing to remember for new comers to such media gatherings is that this is not Sri Lanka where tame 'journalists' from the state media would bow obsequiously and others might be intimidated by injudicious warnings or outright threat.

The freedom of speech is well entrenched in this society and it cannot be silenced by government threats or violence. Only a very brave or foolish British (or indeed European) government would want to take that road. Those who have tried even in the slightest way to intimidate by dangling that Damoclean sword over the heads of media institutions such as the BBC have found the media circling their wagons against the government.

Unfortunately Sri Lankan media does not find itself in that enviable position and has to depend on the support of the local public and international organisations to fight their legitimate cause. One would have expected a clearer and more balanced picture of the threat to the media and media freedom from the two Sri Lankan participants especially since they have not only just come from Colombo but also because they would be more familiar with the day to day travails of journalists.

Sadly Sunanda Deshapriya of the Free Media Movement (FMM) missed out on an opportunity to appraise the audience on two critical matters. One is the so-called national media policy and how this would affect professionalism and peace reporting which were part of the subject for discussion and the situation of journalists -if there are any- in the LTTE-controlled territory and the threat from the Tigers to dissenting journalists.

This aspect often gets lost or buried in the general attacks on government media policy by international media organisations who forget that the LTTE is vying for recognition as a legitimate entity. Deshapriya did make some passing references to the latter but that will not do. The problem is that the threat to media freedom comes from two quarters at least and that is equally dangerous because one is the government and the other sees itself as a government, the difference, to put it briefly, is that one is popularly elected and the other is not.

It was left to Bertrand Pecquerie, director of the Paris-based World Editors Forum to make an all too brief a comment on the media policy being formulated. Unfortunately the discussion veered away from the central issue of the day-the safety of journalists in Sri Lanka.

Somebody called Bandara from the BBC's Sinhala Service gave us a lecture on how the Sinhala, Tamil and English language media reported or did not report a recent event. His claim to 20 years of journalistic experience might have been more valid if the so-called Sinhala service had also not been guilty of journalistic lapses in reporting of certain events, unconsciously or otherwise, as I have pointed out previously and so do not wish to cover the same ground.

To me the danger comes from the growing tendency in government/official circles to condemn any criticism of the armed forces as a traitorous act because it is claimed to demoralise the soldier. The latest to echo the words of the military spokesman Col. Udaya Nanayakkara who called the defence correspondent of this newspaper Iqbal Athas a traitor, and the chief of the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) Lakshman Hulugalle who says that anybody who undermines soldiers should be treated as a traitor.

There are a couple of questions that should be posed to Hulugalle, whoever he is. Would he consider the provision of faulty or outdated equipment to fighting forces, especially frontline troops, an act that undermines the morale, and more so the lives of soldiers?

Would such acts by whosoever demoralises the frontline soldiers? Would the media be right in reporting such maladroit, to use a euphemism, acts as they affect the ordinary soldier?

If those in the higher echelons of the military and/or the administration cream off commissions in purchasing arms which in the long term would affect the morale of the forces, would the media be right in the public interest ( surely he has heard of that?) of reporting that as fact or drawing public attention to the possibility of malpractice?In which case should the media be dubbed traitorous or awarded national honours such as deshabandu or kalasuri instead?

I ask these questions because the exposure by the media of malpractice and provision of sub standard equipment to British troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan by the defence authorities have not been damned as traitorous acts that demoralise the military but actually applauded by the public. Equally the families of solders-some of whom died as a consequence of poor equipment- have loudly acclaimed the role of the media in exposing such shortcomings and helping to save the lives of soldiers in the future.

May I also ask Hulugalle whether it would be wrong to court martial soldiers and officers for dereliction of duty or other offences like human rights violations, if this is deemed to affect the morale of soldiers generally? Should offences therefore be allowed to continue unabated in such circumstances?

Again I ask this because it was the media exposure of the atrocities in detention centres such as Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq that led to court martials and other trials of the alleged offenders. No petty official or military spokesman here jumped up in high dudgeon and accused the media of being traitors to the country. Rather the country applauded and the government took serious note.

On the contrary, not only did such media scrutiny buttress the freedom of expression but the appreciation of those in the military who felt they were all been tarnished by the same brush because of the acts of a few.

Before those like Hulugalle join the chorus for this Napoleonic mood music, maybe he should be reminded that the first attempt to overthrow, violently if necessary, a democratically-elected government in Sri Lanka was by the military in 1962. Had the attempt not been stopped at the eleventh hour with the arrest of its leaders, who knows, we might have gone the way of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Fiji Myanmar which has recently been in the news, Chile or some of the African countries such as Uganda and Nigeria.

Let me pose one last question to Hulugalle. Who are the traitors- those who wilfully drain the country of its assets and engage in acts of aggrandisement or act mala fide or those who expose them? Hulugalle appears to have joined today's parlour game of blaming the media for every act of commission and omission. In a recent interview with another newspaper he is reported to have told the interviewer "You are at liberty to write whatever you want." Words dipped in honey surely.

It is the liberty he so blithely refers to that is being threatened by his own words. Perhaps if he reads the 1978 constitution- if I remember correctly it is Article 14- that grants freedom of speech and publication. If so why do we need Hulugalle's assurances on what is permissible and what is not, unless of course he wants to join others in standing the constitution on its head.