MEDIA-SRI LANKA: Tame Press or Free Media

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jan 30 1998 (IPS) - Sri Lankan security forces search the home and hotel room of two Indian journalists. The officers are polite. The search is thorough. The regional correspondent of a Colombo-based national newspaper is threatened with bodily harm after he writes a story that is perceived as anti-government.

The defence correspondent of a Sunday newspaper is under constant surveillance by the air force, worried about his regular columns exposing so-called shady deals in the service. A TV news director says he is “reluctant” to report the truth, fearing that his station may be shut down for a second time.

These are some recent instances of media harassment reported in newspapers here, under a government that promised full freedom to the press on coming to power in 1994. But is it that bad?

“No,” argues Lucian Rajakarunanayake, a veteran journalist who supports the ruling People’s Alliance government. “The government resorts to legal means by way of criminal defamation cases to take action against journalists.”

Most analysts agree. The media is freer today compared to the dark days of the United National Party’s (UNP) rule from 1977 to 1994 when journalists were routinely victimised, attacked and some even killed for their anti-government views.

The media played a major role in the election defeat of the UNP. But President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s honeymoon with the press did not last either, some of her biggest supporters soon turned critics. Chulawansa Srilal, well known for his investigative stories who helped her party immensely and became Kumaratunga’s first press secretary, is now with the opposition.

Other journalists working for the state media complain that their freedom has been fettered despite promises made by the government to remove restrictions on the press.

“My complaint is that the state media has become a slavish voice of the state. During the last government, it was to a certain extent able to express some independent views,” grumbled a senior journalist at a state-run newspaper who fell foul of the administration after he tried to maintain his independence.

“The fault lies in the government’s thinking it needs the support of the state media in times of crisis and using it to only project its image. It then tends to lose credibility,” he said.

Bitter attacks on the government by the independent media — focusing on corruption, shady deals and dubious tenders in state transactions — have become a volatile issue for the government and worried ministers are privately pressing for action.

The issue now is whether the government should deny these reports or ignore it altogether. Denying it would mean issuing a statement almost everyday, say analysts. Ignore it, is what government advisers have advised.

“I think the government has taken a conscious decision to ignore the anti-government reports in the ‘Sunday Leader’ because they say it is biased and one-sided and that most people think the same,” said one editor.

The Sunday Leader, whose editor Lasantha Wickrematunga was earlier pro-government, has been particularly critical of the president, accusing her of interfering in government tenders and unfairly criticising senior government officials.

While the UNP government used intimidation and threats to silence media criticism, Kumaratunga’s ruling People’s Alliance government is looking to the courts to clear its name.

Wickrematunga is among four newspaper editors against whom criminal defamation cases are pending for reports on Kumaratunga and her ministers. Last year, Sinha Ratnatunga, editor of the respected ‘Sunday Times’ was convicted after a widely-publicised trial, of wrongly reporting that Kumaratunga had attended a midnight birthday party of a fellow politician at a plush hotel.

A jail term of 18 months was slapped on Ratnatunga but the sentence was suspended for a period of seven years. Ratnatunga said the PA has not kept its election promise on press freedom.

Within five months of coming to power, it had cracked down on Ratnatunga and soon after on five other editors. “It was a concerted attempt to hit at the top of the newspaper establishment,” he said about his defamation case.

A parliamentary select committee was set up last year when relations between the media and the government began deteriorating with the aim of preparing a media policy. Last week, the Committee of parliamentarians from all parties met and has called for public representation to help their work.

Experts say the committee would examine whether to repeal the law on criminal defamation, the rules of the ‘Official Secrets Act’ that restricts the use of sensitive government information and other regulations which impinge on journalists’ rights.

Last September, the government scrapped the obnoxious legislation which gave the right to parliamentarians to punish journalists for character defamation.

Parliament unanimously agreed to undo the Parliamentary Powers and Privileges (Amendment) Bill of 1978 under which journalists could be tried “in the well (chamber) of the House” by members of Parliament sitting as a court.