Media At It, And At Media

by N. Sathiya Moorthy

It was Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe who launched the new government’s early criticism of the nation’s media, both print and electronic. Having relied more on the ‘social media’ than the traditional forms in a way, he could afford to take on the nation’s ‘media moghuls’ in a way.

In particular, the PM has named the names of some national dailies more than once, as the villains of the piece – and of, national peace and harmony.

Yet, it was surprising that President Maithripala Sirisena should be referring to sections of the media abusing the freedom granted to them, by law and also practice – that too, in his National Day address. Possibly, it was unprecedented. Yet, unlike PM Ranil Wickremesinghe, who warned of action if they failed to behave, Sirisena only advised the media that any future government could  ‘again curtail’ the same, if they abused it now.

It’s not that PM Wickremesinghe has been making sweeping attacks on the nation’s media. He has only been telling them not to whip up racism and other ills back into the Sri Lankan society, which is still recovering from the decades of ethnic dispute, war and violence – and may take many more years before restoring ‘normalcy’, whatever be.

Yet, the ‘hidden’ message was not missing from his recent observation in the hilly Badulla. “The television or radio, these frequencies do not belong to those media companies. The government issued the licence. They belong to the public,” the PM was quoted as saying. That’s saying a lot.

 

Curbing tendencies

Clearly, the ‘reforms government’ that the Maithri-Ranil duo head has begun feeling the ‘media heat’ on a variety of issues. It began possibly with the co-sponsored UNHRC resolution on the one hand and the ‘Central Bank scam’, on the other, in the weeks and months after they had assumed power. It seems to continue. Or, at least the leadership seems to be feeling the heat – and more than there might be, it would seem.

There can be no two ways about condemnation of media, or sections thereof, when it comes to whipping up racism and ethnic irritants. No single language or ‘ethnicity-owned’ publication could be singled out in this regard. Nor may many qualify for exemptions, if any. No Government in the post-war, national reconciliation mode could encourage it. Nor could the nation as a whole afford it.

There is thus justification in the Government leaders, whether President, PM or others, were to feel perturbed at any media-instigated protest of any kind. They would also be justified in initiating appropriate legal action in this regard. The law provides for it, and the Government should not hesitate to curb such tendencies.

It is entirely another thing for Government leaders, starting with the President and his National Day address, making sweeping statements on, about or against the media in the country. It leaves a bad taste in democracies.

Over time, people will remember only the Government leaders’ condemnation of the media. They would not either remember, or want to remember and recall context or purpose. It’s where all campaigns in support of ‘media freedom’ begin, now as in the past. It’s where the real problem would begin. At that stage, the media and the public at large would assume that the Government was out to suffocate media freedom. They otherwise would continue to wonder as to where they had gone wrong in advising and cautioning the media to be free, but fair.

One recent report of a non-event would merit attention. It was about the PM’s security guards keeping journalists away from a tea-event inside Parliament complex. In other circumstances, both the event and the report would have been ignored. Not now, when most readers of the said news item could be expected to visualise a sinister design behind it.

 

Pinching shoes

Clearly, the present-day leaders are beginning to know and feel where the shoe pinches in terms of media and media freedom. To be fair to them, through the past 10 years of the Rajapaksa regime, not once did any one of them seemed to have spoken either in Parliament or outside, the alleged trampling of media and media freedom under the ruling juggernaut.

As in the case of allegations of corruption and nepotism, high-handedness and human rights violations, the present-day rulers, allowed matter to fester than challenge it for and on behalf of the ‘suffering’ millions. That is even more true of those that had shared power with the predecessor regime almost till the last date, and now behave as if they are Rip van Winkles, all!

It’s thus that the common voter assumed that the present-day rulers were the panacea to all the ills attributed and attributable to their predecessors. After a point, that was enough for the voter to assume that the then Opposition would be the antithesis and antidote for all that was wrong with the existing Government and system(s).

The voter now cannot blame the then Opposition for what they were not, then or now. They voted on expectations, not necessarily promises, other than those that might have been made on the very eve of elections or on the spur of poll-heat. ‘Media freedom’ fell within the scope of those un-promised expectations.

In a way, the present-day rulers may be feeling the ‘media pressure’ when the shoe is on their foot. It was so for the predecessor regime when they were wearing the shoe(s). Yet, there cannot be any comparison. Through the Rajapaksa days in power, there had been periodic reports of ‘journalist disappearances’.

 

Stand-alone case

Those ‘disappearances’ went beyond the broad-day killing of Lasantha Wickrematunge, on a busy street in capital, Colombo.

There had been other arrests without warrants, detentions without trials, and ‘white van abductions’ of journalists. But most such incidents are from the war years/decades.

In a way, Lasantha’s was a stand-alone case. There were others, where journalists wrote to provoke the authorities without proof or evidence, and knocked at the doors of human rights activists from the country and outside, to make it to greener pastures, mostly in economic terms – not necessarily in terms of greater media freedom.

The present Government can begin by pulling before courts those media persons or institutions that they think are whipping up ethnic or race/racist frenzy, as used to be before and during the decades of war. It could also take up with international cooperation, investigations into ‘journalist disappearances’ during the war years in general, and the Rajapaksa regime otherwise. It could yield results, not necessarily inside the country, but elsewhere.

 

War effort

It would be a travesty to believe that ‘media freedom’ got trampled upon, if at all, only under the erstwhile Rajapaksa regime. It would be worse to believe that the nation’s media behaved any different or any better during the decades preceding. Sri Lankan media has been more responsive than responsible since Independence.

Media’s contribution to the sharpening of ethnic differences and socio-economic disparities through the early days of ‘Statelessness’, ‘Sinhala Only’, JVP insurgencies and the long and harsh LTTE era cannot be over-looked.

Individual Governments and leaders, including many in the present dispensation in their past avtars, have done enough to exploit the media while in the Opposition and exposing the ‘misuse’ while in power.

Yet, it was under Rajapaksa that co-opting the national media as a part of the nation’s ‘war effort’ became a part of military strategy – or, so would it seem. It made limited yet some sense as the LTTE rival excelled in the art of international propaganda, and the Sri Lankan State was always found wanting, be it in pro-active media approach or in countering LTTE’s propaganda, nearer home and overseas, alike.

 

Post-9/11 effect

In the post-9/11 global psyche of ‘our terrorists’ and ‘their terrorists’, the concept of ‘our media’ and ‘their media’ too took deeper roots. In native US, where the ‘terrorism’ parable found greater favour, the ‘journalism’ parallel did not take off. Considering that the US media had invariably looked at the rest of the world through the eyes of the White House, State Department and Pentagon – not necessarily in that order – the 9/11 shock did even greater wonders to the nation’s media psyche. The reverse may – or, may not – have been true of post-9/11 Sri Lanka. The LTTE had already established a precedent that bordered on a trend in terms of ‘punishing’ Tamil intellectuals and journalists that did not fall in line.

Post-war, it was not easy for the arms of the Sri Lankan State to apply the reverse gear and expect it to work, then and there. The advent of the post-war TGTE, a ‘virtual government in the virtual world’ of internet and computers, and the accompanying global (media) war of ‘accountability issues’ might have been a contributing factor, for the halt-and-go approach.  The halt did not go, go forward.

The Sri Lankan Government still needs the nation’s media, and their global counterparts, wherever possible. They may have already felt the gaps — the gaps which Rajapaksa’s ‘war-effort’ approaches to journalism and media could not fill. The war victory, while being news worthy the world over for the day, got over-shadowed by the media-inclusive ‘accountability’ campaign.

The new Government would want the media when they want it, and where they want it – not when they do not want it, where they do not want. With the war gone, the ‘war-effort’ approaches too have to go. With that has returned the traditional, post-war distrust and animosity of the days prior to the Rajapaksa regime.

The mistrust is just now by the rulers, not yet of the rulers. At this pace and phase, a responsive, if not responsible, media mistrust towards the rulers of the day could evolve out of the current discouragement and consequent discontent. That’s when media freedom would be at stake, and so could and would ‘media responsibility’ and ‘accountability’.  It had all happened in the past, there is no reason, why it should not happen in the future – if the stake-holders do not read the writing on the wall, and act/react with greater responsibility and accountability, than mere responsiveness. But then, the initiative, as always, rests with the Government leadership. The nation’s media — ethnicity no bar – cannot escape to be responsive, either.

The time at the disposal of the nation is short. At a time when the Rajapaksa camp, with nearly 50 per cent vote-share, from among the majority Sinhala community, twice in eight months, last year, is thinking and talking about floating a new political party or group of some identifiable kind, the stakes are high. The ‘our media’ and ‘their media’ syndrome can acquire new angles and angularities, not all of them in the mainstream or exclusively with the majority media.

Those who thought that the present duo was the fit replacement for the Rajapaksa time now have their job cut out. They may need to work overtime just now, to ensure that all sections of the nation’s media enjoyed full freedom, but also acted with greater responsibility in the larger cause that they think and believe Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan State are!

(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary, Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. email: sathiyam54@gmail.com)