Sri Lanka It's Happening

May 5, 2005

Yesterday was press freedom day. It is appropriate that it came around just after the brutal killing of Sivaram. Jouranlists as expected took to the streets to protests, but the question begs asking do they make use of the freedom that is availble?

Sure the journalists are under threat, the recent killing is ample proof of that, but they do not get killed just for saying company A sells substandard products, or person B is corrupt. The Sundary Leader and the Ravaya (Sinhala) have been doing that for sometime. Sure, they get death threat, there was an attempt on the life of the Leader Editor, the government tried to arrest him and tried to seal his press, but the editors and staff of both these journals are more or less doing their job with out fear making full use of it.

What of the others? The people who work for the state media mafia have no freedom. They write what their political masters dictate. Write now they are not too sure who their politcal master is with the president battling with her one time pal the Media Minister for control of the State Media Mafia. It would seem that the real political master is the JVP, the coalition partner of the government.

What of the other newspapers and TV and Radio stations? they write/broadcast what advertisers dictate and they have no freedom either. Rarely do you find a Sri Lankan journal accuse a big company of wrong doing, even though wrong doing by big companies are all around us, clearly visible to the naked eye. Some even flaunth it. The reason? Speak ill of these big boys and the advertising budget dries up. Thus the belief is that it is better crawl on their knees rather than to tell the truth.

On the rare occaisions that they speak ill of politicans and business men, these cowards do not name names.

Posted by raditha at May 5, 2005 5:04 AM