MEDIA-SRI LANKA: Readers Relish The Daily Dose Of Violence

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Apr 6 1999 (IPS) - Sri Lanka’s bloody ethnic conflict running into its 17th year in 1999 tops the list of stories followed avidly by newspaper readers, according to a new survey that puts local news and crime stories in dailies well behind war stories.

The survey, conducted by the University of Colombo for the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, also found that less than 0.2 percent of Sri Lankans speak mainly in English, contrary to popular belief that English is widely used.

“The news item most popularly read is ‘news regarding war’ followed by ‘local news’ and ‘information on crime’. Most readers ignore editorials and features that tend to highlight positive values or enhance general knowledge,” the 1998 survey of newspaper readers said.

It also revealed that most of this island’s people are monolingual. While the principal language of communication for the majority Sinhalese community was Sinhala (86.7 percent), for 12.7 percent it was Tamil, and for 0.2 percent it was English.

The findings of the research team from the university’s Department of Sociology are expected to help educationists and policy planners in disseminating knowledge among the people through newspapers and other forms.

Of those whose principal language of communication was Sinhala, only 16.1 percent could read in English and 0.9 percent in Tamil, the survey said. However, among the minority Tamils, 35.4 percent could read in Sinhala and 4.8 percent in English.

This is significant because language has often been cited as the cause of the ethnic tension between majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils.

Observed Cultural Affairs Minister Lakshman Jayakody, “All this while we thought English was being widely spoken,” he said. “English is being promoted as a link language to bridge the gulf between the Sinhalese and the Tamils,” he pointed out.

Jayakody told IPS that it was significant that minority groups like the Tamils knew Sinhala, the language of the majority community much more, than the other way round of Sinhalese having a knowledge of Tamil.

Prof Siripala Hettige, Sri Lanka’s well-known sociologist who co-ordinated the survey as head of the Colombo University’s Sociology Department, told IPS it came up with some disturbing issues.

“Apart from the fact that people have a thirst for war news, the fact that fewer people are speaking or reading in English is a disturbing thought. The knowledge of English is not only a way out of the ethnic conflict, but also a necessity in the global context,” he said.

The survey, also aimed at clearing doubts about whether the reading habits matched the high literacy rate amongst the population, covered 10,000 respondents in 3,000 households in seven provinces in Sri Lanka.

This excluded the north and the east where fighting between government troops and Tamil rebels made it difficult to seek public responses.

Since 1983, Tamil rebels have been fighting for a separate state for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. The roots of the conflict lie in the Sinhala-dominated government’s decision to make Sinhala the national language, sparking ethnic tension.

Under colonial British rule, many more Tamils than Sinhalese had held high positions due to their better education and excellent command of the English-language.

The Colombo University survey is also food for thought for those who believe people are tired of the daily menu of crime provided by the newspapers and that “positive” stories about other issues would be more interesting.

Shirani Tilakawardene, a respected woman judge of Sri Lanka’s Appeals Court, told a group of journalists discussing the reporting of issues relating to women and children that she believed stories portraying public deeds was more interesting to readers than crime.

Sociologists have also partly blamed the rapid breakdown in social values in Sri Lanka on excessive reporting of crime and suicides by the media, and violence on television.

The survey shows that the newspaper-reading habit is not widespread, as believed, and that the Sunday or weekend papers were the most popular. Fewer people were reading books, nowadays.

“Of the population in the seven provinces, just above half

(54.7 percent) read newspapers. The habit varies significantly between provinces,” it said. The level of education also positively influences the newspaper-reading habit.

A higher prevalence of the newspaper-reading habit was seen amongst young people between 12 years and up to high school. It dropped among those who had higher qualifications.

The survey found that more men read newspapers than women, because men had more time than women who were engaged in domestic activities. This was not so in the case of books, where more women, 40 percent, read than men (37 percent).