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| Sunday, 22 August 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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The right column Should newspapers carry only positive news? Negative news is also newsworthy. Sometimes they are worthier. Last week there was a word of advice to the Editor from a friend in USA who objected to a negative word in a headline for which he had substituted a positive word. Actually he had a point and it was well taken. Hence, it is with a little apprehension that I am writing this column today. Unfortunately it is negative news that I comment on. However, I am convinced that to change negative to positive, the negative cannot be suppressed. If you suppress the negative, the positive too gets suppressed for they are opposites that go in tandem. The Deputy Public Trustee has allegedly supplied false information to the US Embassy to send a relative for higher education to the USA, reported the media. Some time ago there were allegations in the media against the Public Trustee himself on receiving undue commissions from a bank for depositing public money. The police have questioned the Commissioner for the Registration of Persons over the issue of bogus identity cards to several persons including suspected suicide bombers. Allegations of sexually abusing underage girls in their custody have been levelled against the director of a children's village. Similar allegations against school principals surface from time to time in the media. All these examples show the magnitude of moral degradation we have fallen into. To whom should we address our grievances when those at the top are corrupt? (Vetat niyarat goyam kaa nam kaata pavasamu ey amaruwa?) In this age of globalisation and knowledge society, the buzzword is e-governance. Ministers, State departments and statutory bodies and even political parties and politicians are competing with one another to have their own web domains. It seems a matter of privilege and prestige to have your own website. Last week another ministry celebrated the opening of its website. These website are initiated with much fanfare where top politicos push a button and their smiling faces appear in the media just as in those customary ribbon-cutting ceremonies. But what happens to them afterwards? They lie dormant or go extinct like the dinosaurs. This columnist tried to log into several websites of government Ministries and departments that are listed in the President's official website www.priu.gov.lk, one of the rare and regularly updated websites. Most of them have not been updated since last year. Some had only mission and vision statements. Some could not be accessed at all. So much for e-governance and e-society! |
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