|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 23 June 2002 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
The media and the message Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake Time past and possibly time future must have surely conspired with the
roaring, rolling time present caught in its intractable, never-ceasing
flow, last Tuesday when the Editors' Guild of Sri Lanka felicitated its
own kind who had during the previous year covered themselves with
distinction in their respective fields.
By a happy stroke of the fates this was also the day when the newspaper editors who had been menaced by the ogre of the criminal defamation law were finally freed from their condition of anxiety when Parliament debated to a finish and passed without a division the two laws enabling the abolition of this incubus. This was good news to the newspaper people who had gathered at the Mount Lavinia Hotel for their annual revelries consummated by cocktails and a buffet dinner provided by the elder statesman of the Chefs' Guild Pabilis and supervised by Resident Manager Mahendra Hulangamuwa, a class mate and old friend from my Kandy days whom it was a pleasure to bump into.
So much then for the mutual back-patting and self-congratulation. What then of the reality? There is no longer the law of criminal defamation which makes it possible for the high and the mighty in the land to take journalists to court at state expense (as opposed to a private libel case) and what is more send the journalists to jail if the court so orders. It is certainly a relief that this particular Sword of Damocles does not hand over us any more but will this make us better newspaper people? Necessary as it is to get grid of criminal defamation which had been abused in the past will not this appear to the readership as a kind of transaction with the Government which the more influential journalists have indulged into save their own skins. If we as journalists are to rid ourselves of such unsavoury perceptions we will have to work harder at our profession and establish our credibility as professionals. Historically anywhere newspapers and politicians have been known to enjoy an adversarial relationship and while this does not have to be taken to its extreme journalists also have to be wary of getting into too much of a hunky-dory relationship with any Government. Now don't get me wrong. I am not pin-pointing the Government in power.In fact the UNF Government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has come up with mind-boggling media reforms such as the proposed Press Complaints Commission and the Freedom of Information Act. It is a melancholic thought that a measure such as the abolition of criminal defamation should have been mooted by the late Dharmasiri Senanayake as Media Minister inspired by the report submitted by the R. K. W. Gunasekera committee but that it should have been dismissed with contempt by his successor paving the way for the UNF to go ahead with these reforms. Which again illustrates how media reforms (or for that matter any public interest laws) can get caught in the political cross-fire. The Minister for the Media at the time Mangala Samaraweera was tardy about going ahead with radical media reforms because in his own mind he felt that this would be disadvantageous to his Government in a situation where he perceived that the bulk of the media was hostile to his party and Government. This was not an entirely inaccurate assessment but the mistake the former Minister made was in seeking to counter this by using the entire machinery of the state-owned media in a ham-handed way. More subtle methods were surely called for? There is a lesson here for the UNF Government as well. The UNF Government has so far enjoyed one of the best relationships which any Government in recent memory has enjoyed with the media. But just as brow-beating the media can be fatal so will the complacency which will be induced in a Government if the media are only hurrah boys or are just taken for granted. This then is the challenge which confronts both the Government and the media. How does the Government, ensure a free press while not traducing the limits of transparency to which it is committed. How does the media (which is widely perceived as being friendly towards the Government) assert its independence? It is a symbiotic relationship in which both sides are caught. The media is called upon to assert its independence not in any sense of braggadocio but to advance the rights of its readers while the Government is called upon to respect the media's rights. On the fine balance between these two opposite poles will hinge at least a substantial part of the country's future in the vital days to come.Anyway all these weighty thoughts apart it was nice to enjoy last Tuesday's breezy evening on the Mount Lavinia promenade. There were old friends and new. if a nostalgic note is permitted a steadily aging scribe it warmed my heart to meet old Lake House colleagues such as Neville de Silva come from London to cover himself with glory as well as give away the prize award of the evening named after his brother Mervyn, surely the doyen of us all whose third death anniversary we commemorate this month. There was also old 'Observer' staff T. M. K. Samat who was recognised for his sports writing for the 'Sunday Leader,' a writer if ever there was one who has taken sports writing to the heights of poetry. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
