Ranil
Wikremesinghe : takes up cause of the press
"I'm all for press
freedom. Its the journalists I don't like." So says a Tom Stoppard
character, who probably knew our President.
The press loves to talk about press freedom, because the press is collectively self-important too, like the politicians. ( I'm not saying mea culpa — I'm just saying we are culpa.) We all, press and politicians included, seem to labour under the illusion that the press and the state shall reconcile, some rustic day soon. But the twain shall never meet, what?
Ranil Wickremesinghe says the twain shall meet, sometime soon. Son of Esmond, he claims that the day he will hang up his boots he will revert back to the family business of the press, which makes it imperative for him to bring about the ultimate reconciliation between the two institutions.
You can't help but get the idea that the press talks too much about the press. But, the press are indulged. Politicians, politicians such as Ranil, indulge the press. Politicians such as Mangala Samaraweera indulge the press. As Tom Stoppard said, its journalists we don't like — else, press freedom, we all will swear by.
Said one senior journalists, at a press party held this Friday ( details we are sure you will find ) that the press should be "depersonalised." Individual heroism, he claims, has no place in the theatre of the press.
But, with Victor Ivon talking about the three defamation cases that were filed against him, it was difficult to divorce the issues from the personalities.
The dichotomy between the issues of "responsibility" and " media freedom" can be glossed over in many ways, but one wonders whether it is easy to reconcile the issues of media freedom and responsibility with a final settlement in the portals of parliament.
The laws don't provide for human ingenuity, and the laws certainly do not provide for human ingenuity in ensnaring opponents. For example, the current argument, is that criminal defamation should be taken off the statute books. That should be done, and it would be done, if the consensus that is now emerging is seriously considered. But, there is no guarantee that governments which do not have criminal defamation laws handy, will not make use of the process of civil defamation to exercise control over the gentlemen of the press.....
The Commonwealth Press Union, for example, has a wealth of information on how certain regimes have used the laws of civil defamation, in conjugation with a certain amount of influence it wields over the judiciary, to impose massive fines on dissident newspaper organizations in order that they go bankrupt.
The twain shall never meet, but "in the marketplace of ideas'', the only consolation is that there will be a balance of opinion, that there will be a massive divergence of ideas that will in the end by some miraculous osmosis vomit out the truth. Such is the theory.
The best thing to do about this whole confrontation, however, is perhaps to cut the cant. As long as third world governments exist, with particularly third world problems, the tug of war between the press and the government will exist. To use cliché, after all,, it is only one part, a mere symptom of the larger malaise which is that we exist in mere quasi democracies.
We exist, in fact, in entrenched quasi democracies. It probably needs a reformer of the zeal of Jesus Christ or the Buddha to conduct such a reformation that we end up as full and complete democracies, but as long as such larger philosophical questions are irrelevant, we might as well cut the hypocrisy and say that the governments in power always want to stifle the press, while oppositions want to strengthen the press, mostly in order to stifle, I mean topple the government.
In the meantime, we will always have this theatre, where politicians will conduct the love hate relationship with the press. Its fitting we have a party in these circumstances.
If the press did not impinge on larger freedoms, on larger issues that concern democracy and the health of the economy etc., we could have even been content to leave things at that.
But, there will always be journalists who will by turns be the nattering nabobs of negativism and the martyrs in the heroic tradition — the Richard Soysa's.
Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, one savant of the free press now in his responsible incarnation, made a case, incognito at this party, for the press to be less "heroic?" Why should the press be heroes, he said, because we are too small for that?
Somebody had the temerity to question him about Richard Soysa, however. Was he just a small hero who should not have been sung about as well?
"Well Richard was different," we were told, " because he was a terminal case."
Translation: Richard died. Need we say more about the fragility of the concept of the freedom of the press? But, we are all for press freedom, right?
Go to Hulftsdorp Hill by Mudliyar
Return to the Editorial/Opinion contents page