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| Sunday, 14 December 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Democracy and press freedom: a short history Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake Media freedom has once again hit the top of the political agenda with President Chandrika Kumaratunga's take over of the Media Ministry and her announcement of a Presidential Task Force to propose media reforms. For its part the United National Front Government has announced that none of their spokesmen would give interviews to the Government-managed media claiming that the President's take over of the ITN and Lake House was illegal. In this context the present writer thinks it appropriate to re-produce the text of a talk delivered by him at the fifth anniversary celebrations of the 'Ravaya' in November 1991. Among those in the audience on that day were Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Mrs. Chandrika Kumaratunga, Mr. Lalith Athulathmudali and Mr. Gamini Dissanayake among others. Democracy and press freedom - these two concepts were almost taken for granted in that heady dawn after independence when we as a nation flattered ourselves with the comfortable belief that ours was the model democracy to emerge out of British colonial rule, the idyllic country with a literate population used to the ways if adult franchise well served by the Welfare State, in short the archetypal political Eden of the Westminster ethos to which we are again paying nostalgic homage. But so much has happened since then which has exposed on what fragile a base that comfortable belief was founded. Communal violence bordering on holocaust, a powerful ethnic insurgency which has earned a place in the folk-lore of armed rebellion, two insurgencies by dissatisfied youth of the majority, community, the near decimation of a generation and the serious erosion of democratic institutions culminating in near anarchy and societal collapse have served to explode our illusions. What function did the press perform in this situation? Was it able to act as a shaping force of public opinion taking society in the direction of democratic, civilised, harmonizing values or was it the pliant tool of the establishment pandering to the worst prejudices and instincts of the rabble? That is the painful question which we have to address ourselves to. Historically the press as we know it was the product of the hegemony of the English-educated comprador bourgeoisie over the rest of Sri Lankan society immediately before and since independence. D.R. Wijewardene, Sri Lanka's best known and most distinguished press baron, got the idea for a newspaper from the British Daily News now long defunct though his own protege here is thriving albeit under a different dispensation. The Times of Ceylon was the authentic mouthpiece of British Plantation interests. Even though the Gunasenas who owned the recently collapsed Independent Newspapers wore a striking Sinhala Buddhist visage they were at heart seeking to compete with the liberal, comparador Wijewardenes of Lake House for the mantle of press overlordship. This class of newspaper owners shared the same outlook and beliefs as Sri Lanka's post-independence political leadership. This was basically a class educated in English and thus alienated from their roots, reared on a comfortable liberalism which could not last beyond the boom days of the Korean war, intellectually shallow and culturally and spiritually impoverished. They had known no great upheavals or struggles, were not baptised by the raging fires of revolt which had raged elsewhere in the colonial world. On the contrary they believed in polite protestation and parliamentary language. The influence of this class on the country's press was necessarily debilitating. The press by and large supported the establishment of the day which meant the UNP. While there were no overt restrictions, taboos or pressures on the press as such during the first decades after independence the press was not adventurist or crusading in the sense in which that word is understood in journalism. To be sure it was possessed of a high degree of professionalism and Sri Lanka during that period has produced some outstanding and remarkable journalists. But by and large the newspapers were supportive of the establishment, conformed to its values and concerned itself with parochial issues which were of interest to the English-educated upper and middle classes of the time. During these early years the Sinhala newspapers did not have an independent existence of their own as such. They largely reflected the thinking of the English-educated classes on major issues except for the Lankadeepa which was known for its vigorous and robust journalism and individual point of view. The attempt to correct this imbalance provided even more disastrous. The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) both singly and in coalition with the left had been quite correctly critical of the imbalance in a press which supported the UNP and the status quo. But its take over of Lake House euphemistically rationalised as a broad-basing only substituted a Government monopoly for private monopoly. With the subsequent politicisation of the Times under the SLFP and its take-over by the UNP the process of the Government's intervention in newspaper's has become accelerated. My contention, then, has been that caught up between the early laissez faire liberal tolerance of the immediate post-independence period and the later intervention of Governments in the field of newspaper publishing Sri Lanka's press has not been able to play the great crusading role expected of it in a newly emergent country. If I seem to have overstated or exaggerated my case it may be to drive the point home all the more forcefully but let me add that to be fair by the press it only reflected the failure of our post-independence political elite to rebuild the new Sri Lanka nation. Now against that ideological and political context let us look at the facts. During the early years after independence there were no overt pressures or taboos which applied to newspapers but they were quite happy to support the UNP. The high-point of this support was of course the bizarre rituals which were enacted in the aftermath of the sudden death of D.S. Senanayake, the father of the nation, when Lake House openly showed its hand as the Kingmaker by maneuvering his seemingly unwilling son Dudley onto the vacant throne much to the chagrin of the more senior but not necessarily qualified Sir John Kotalawela. Later when the first popular revolt against the first Dudley Senanayake Government broke out in August 1953 the press blandly proclaimed 'Business as usual' when the whole economy and administration had come to a standstill as a result of the hartal by the LSSP and CP. S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike the apostate from the bourgeoisie was their pet hate and he was daily thrown to be drawn and quartered by the enormously talented but thoroughly prejudiced Collate. It was only the visionary D.B. Dhanapala, bi-lingual to his fingertips, who dare to defy the brown sahibs of the Times and their English Editor, Victor Lewis, and reflected in the newly established Lankadeepa the stirrings which exploded in the popular victory of April 1956. During the period up to untimely death the architect of that victory got a uniformly bad press. During the first communal riots in 1958 an all-embracing press censorship was imposed by Governor General Oliver Gunatilleke who took over the show, while after the Bandaranaike assassination the short-lived Caretaker prime Minister W. Dahanayake openly used the state radio for political broadcasts in the form of a Political Notebook. During the first administration of Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike attempts to take over the Lake House press continued. A Press Commission was appointed and a bill to establish a Newspaper corporation was introduced finally leading to the collapse of that Government. The campaign against the SLFP and its coalition partners was well orchestrated by the three-newspaper groups and there were even allegations that large sums had been spent to bribe and cajole. After an attempt to stage a coup de tat by right-wing officers of the army, navy and police against the Sirima Bandaranaike government was aborted it was revealed that a front page welcoming the new regime had been produced and kept ready at the Times. The Dudley Senanayake Government which took office at the General Election in 1965 received the usual support from the press (or the national press as it was called) but where it didn't if did not hesitate to seal the press of the LSSP-oriented 'Janadina' for carrying a story that the Prime Minister was present at a barbecue and to prosecute the irrepressible Editor of CP-oriented Aththa. The rest is recent history. Despite the emergence of Upali Newspapers the resurrection of the Times under Ranjith Wijewardane and the flowering of a small crop of alternative publications outside the mainstream media the basic pattern which I have set out above has remained. Some of the mass circulation as well as alternative newspapers have been able to develop and propagate a populist-radical oritique of the establishment but sometimes their writings have been marred by a majoritarian chauvinism. On the whole, however, the newspapers have been pretty tame finding in increased pressures from the Government an excuse for conformity and self-censorship. They have both contributed to and have become prisoners of the prevailing intellectual and moral confusion generated by the clash of loyalties produced by two revolts on the two sides of the ethnic divide. But this is precisely the danger which it confronts as well. The large bulk of the mass-circulation independent press is owned by private proprietors who can be influenced, intimidated, scared and cajoled in many ways to toe the line. Under such circumstances independent minded journalists in such publications are faced with the choice of either toeing the line themselves or being put on the shelf if not shown the door. The press is vulnerable to such pressures precisely because through its general timidity and conformity the press has failed to act as a rallying point for dissidence and alternative points of view. Although professionally and technically newspapers in Sri Lanka enjoy high standards as a community journalists have not been able to assert their rights and maintain high ethical standards. They have too often, hemmed in by Government and private owners tended to wash their hands of moral responsibilities. This is best illustrated by the current struggle against the proposed Media commission where other bodies such as student unions, trade unions and even provincial councils and local bodies are more vociferous than newspapermen and their associations. This is why a journal like 'Ravaya' which has a remarkable record to its credit during these brief five years has such a large role to play. For the first few decades after independence we clung to the illusion that the laissez faire liberalism of our political elite and their good-natured tolerance would guarantee the freedom of the press much in the way of assured aristocrats tolerating the foibles and eccentricities of fellow nobles pretending to a bohemian way of life. The lesson of the last three decades surely is that it is only an informed polity conscious of its rights which can guarantee the very existence of democratic freedoms in the face of monolithic Governments aggrandizing themselves at the expense of a steadily shrinking civil society. In creating such public opinion a vigorous press has a definite role to play. |
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