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| Sunday, 27 November 2005 |
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Politics |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Elections and the media by J. Vitarana Elections produce enhanced interest in the media. The public usually look up to the media to follow the election campaign. This is natural since they cannot be physically present at most of the election propaganda meetings or events. Newspapers are no exception. However much one views and hears the TV and the radio respectively, people refer the newspapers for confirmation of news in black and white. This casts a huge responsibility on the media. They have to reflect on the campaign as best as they can. Further the media cannot abdicate its agenda building role or advocating what is good and what is bad for the country and the people. In other words it cannot fold its hands and wait with closed eyes and locked ears pretending not to know what is happening in society at large. Thus, news and views, analysis and comments of the media take an added significance during an election. Elections bring to the fore all latent fissures and divisions in society. Not only political divisions, even ethnic and religious differences get more pronounced during election time. It would be time opportune to have a retrospective glance at how the media behaved during the Presidential election campaign. Needless to say the media received both bouquets and brickbats, more of the latter. The so-called state media were at the receiving end of many a criticism. First of all one must say that the media is not part of the state. Hence the term state media is a misnomer. What is usually meant is the media that is wholly or partly owned by the Government (not the state). Whether owned by the government or by private individuals or companies the media has a unique role in society. It is a public service utility. It is ethically bound to serve one master above everybody else. This principal master is the public or the people. The media is duty bound to uphold the people's right to know. No media can abdicate this duty on the pretext that private individuals or companies own it. Those who continue to bash at the 'state media' only seem to exonerate the privately owned media of any blame for their partiality. What is more, the ownership of the private media is not so apparent as in the case of the "state media". Few realise that most of the private media are owned by or are linked to one political family. An examination of the composition of the director boards of these media institutions would reveal the criss-crossing family links. An impartial observer would have noticed that the privately owned media were heavily biased towards the UNP candidate during the election campaign. This was true with respect to news presentation and coverage as well as in the emphasis laid. It is strange that most observers or so-called media monitors failed to see this fact. They were also incompetent to judge what news was true or what news was cooked up or fabricated in the editorial departments. An election watch monitoring the media had reported a certain English daily as best and impartial when the lead story in that paper on that particular day was a total fabrication, which was exposed within twenty four hours. How much credibility should one attach to such monitors? Perhaps their criterion of judgment was wrong or false. Or they were totally partisan. Or else they were incompetent or unprofessional in spite of thousands of green bucks that they received as generous grants from donor agencies. Most of these media surveys had based their judgment on the length in column centimetres devoted to reporting news from different candidates without taking into consideration other factors such as the relative space accorded to election news vis-s-vis other news of public interest. In a politically polarised environment no one could be totally impartial. It is a myth. This is clearly demonstrated by the conduct of the so-called impartial monitors or observers. This applies to the media too. Hence one has to expect a degree of subjectivity in news reporting. There is no such thing as objective news. Each item of objective news has to go through so many gatekeepers whose decisions are tainted with unavoidable subjectivism. Hence, we get the different emphasis of the same news in different media. While the media is free to comment on developments including those political it should report news as objectively as possible. Certain media published or broadcast/telecast various opinion poll results without divulging the basis of such polls, the criteria used, the methodology used and the scope of the survey. As a result they were mere propaganda material for certain candidates. The question arises whether that is an ethical practice. It is not. We also saw how SMS polls were manipulated to bring a desired result. The actual election result was miles off from the predictions of these SMS polls. It proved that SMS polls were a myth created by interested parties. The people have been wiser and were not swayed away by such cheap gimmicks. |
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