The Rajpal Abeynayake column
We bashed media heads together this week
Life is chaos. It has to be, if we have inane statements and incendiary
cartoons creating apocalyptic global mayhem. Not that we in Sri Lanka
couldn't outdo some Danish journalists who say that its a matter of
''courage'' to depict the prophet Mohamed in a way that's offensive to
Islam.
But we have a Minister here who says that everything should be laid at
the door of the press. We didn't even draw those cartoons, and we are to
blame as journalists? Minister Dew Gunasekera pitched into the Sri Lankan
press with exquisite timing; it's a week in which by extension the media was
being taken to the cleaners due to the Danish controversy. Gunasekera made
his statement before the Danish cartoon caper erupted into a full-blown
international crisis.
But, its as if he envisaged it, and prayed for an association of ideas in
peoples mind that those who can blaspheme the prophet (journalists) can
blaspheme governments also, and create chaos in a country by precipitating
conflict. This Minister who does not believe in half measures laid the whole
slice of the ethnic conflict at the door of scribes.
Peace talks are now on the launching pad, and it will be difficult for
either Mr Nimal Siripala de Silva or any of his associates in the peace team
to claim at the post-sessions press conference that the media is to blame
for the ethnic crisis something Minister Gunasekera might recommend.
Such an announcement will among other things have the considerable
foreign press corps expressing solidarity with the local scribes, which
might lead to an incendiary situation with journalists getting together and
turning the tables on protestors by sloganeering against this slur on the
media which will be taken up in collective spirit! In last week's Danish
cartoons, there was a powerful trigger.
You could even say that ''these tings happen.'' Convulsive events are
triggered of by maniacs, and by these I mean these cartoonists and then some
of the protestors who are making no case for themselves by throwing Molotov
cocktails and making a large order nuisance of themselves.
But Sri Lanka's conflict is a different league of things altogether where
there have been documented watershed events such as the promulgation of
Sinhala as an official language that are said to have represented the
passing of this conflict into full bloom and maturity.
Minister Gunasekera is a liberal but is he wooly headed to the point that
these events strike him as the creations of the press? For example, did the
cartoonists and editors of the Bandaranaike era, some of them held in much
veneration, goad Mr. Bandarnaike into making Sinhala the official language
by marching on Rosemead place? They say that in Denmark the cheese walks.
The best cheese is the cheese that walks, and the living organisms that
stick to the outside of the cheese propel the cheese on the table.
Its a fecund place, in that cheesy sense but Denmark is usually boring,
and the reason that people go to see the mermaid in Copenhagen is to make
sure they know how disappointed they are after seeing this national
landmark.
When the Danish cartoonists made the monumental blunder of depicting the
prophet Mohammed, they may have been high on this kind of intoxicating dairy
product not that cheese is known to be intoxicating but what can we think
when we have the walking variety in mind? However offending, the Danish
cartoon was a mistake of the passing ephemeral variety; its something that
passes like the unstoppable stream of piss that inevitably gets discharged
after a draught of two of Carlsberg, the typically Danish beer.
But Minister Gunasekera called the press names for an offense that is of
an entirely different kind. They are saboteurs he said, or at least implied,
and this means that they have been conniving with intent, and are characters
that have a cloak and dagger tendency to throw society into anarchy and
chaos.
The difference between the Danish characterization and ours by Gunasekera,
is like the difference between a boy who breaks a window pane by driving a
ball through it, as contrasted to a registered juvenile delinquent.
When the Ministers go to Geneva negotiations the press will follow, and
since Mr Dew Guanskskera is not part of the negotiating team, its presumed
that the press will have a chance of covering these events unmolested.
This is not to say that Mr Gunasekera molests the press, at least not in
the physical sense, but there is a sense of being violated by the words.
What's the affliction? Sticks and stones may break your bones, but it's the
words that make me go in a corner and cry by myself for hours.....
But Mr Gunasekera is onto something at least in one very limited sense.
When the two peace negotiators or at least the team leaders come out of the
closed door negotiating sessions, what they discussed will be probably of
secondary import, compared to the mileage that the two parties will receive
from what they say at the press briefing.
The press is powerful, and are we mad to abdicate that honor even in this
trying week when we have been called names both globally and locally? But
the media is powerful in quantum, in short staccato bursts, as the press is
the ultimate master of the short duration thrill.
Sensationalisation of the press conference briefings in Geneva is to be
expected; press reports will hog the headlines one day and in the next day
will fade out like static.
Its in the characterization of the press as a long term offender, and as
a re-offender that Minister Gunaskekra made the judgment that will have the
most unoffending cartoonist taking up cudgels.
If he insulted the press that's passable and can be taken, but his
characterization of the news process leaves us with the thought that he has
somehow not got the hang of it. The news in toady's electronic dissemination
era especially, is an assault on the senses slam bam and thank you maam.
The whole Danish controversy will have to been taken in proper spirit if
this was understood - -and this is not to say that the Muslims do not have a
legitimate right to be angry.
Sometimes, on special occasions such as the reporting of a press
conference, the media may shape the news even make the news. That only lasts
for a day though. |
