Missing Links of the TIME’s Journalism

by Mohan Samaranayake

( May 4, 2015, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The world famous weekly US magazine TIME in its 9 April 2015 issue published an article based on an interview the magazine had with President Maithripala Sirisena with the title “SL’s new leader has a tough job; restore democracy and pacify major powers“. The article written by one Nikhil Kumar, in addition to being widely circulated along with a Sinhala translation by the President’s Media, has been prominently reproduced in several local dailies.

The corporate media of the west including TIME invariably paint themselves as of models of professional journalism, media ethics and objective analysts of global events. They tell us, third world journalists ‘be accurate, get your facts correct, look at both sides, if there are more sides, then all of a story and substantiate your comment’. This article contains none of these qualities. It is rather a blind repetition of allegations, some with substance, some unfounded, made against former President Mahinda Rajapaksa by his internal and external opponents before and after the presidential election, than an unbiased and objective analysis of the current political scenario in Sri Lanka.

In reviewing a particular situation there is nothing wrong in repeating allegations if supported by concrete and verifiable evidence. The problem here with the TIME writer is he has not bothered to provide such evidence when he was repeating very serious allegations against Rajapaksa administration. For instance he says almost at the beginning of his article that MR had brought to an end “a nearly three decade civil war in a final push that the UN says may have claimed the lives of as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians”. When and where has the UN made this statement? How the UN could make such an estimate when it was not present anywhere in the battle zone during the height of the conflict? It was only Gordon Weiss, the UN Spokesman in Colombo at that time and whose impartiality is very much in doubt made such a claim even without going beyond Vavuniya. He later withdrew his statement though TIME continues to repeat it. This is only one example for the unsubstantiated claims found in the article which should not be the case of an impartial and objective analysis.

TIME writer, true to the nature of Western corporate media, liberally uses demeaning terms such as ‘Rajapaksa clan’, Rajapaksa regime’ ‘iron fist” and ‘strong man” to describe MR administration. A considerable portion of his long article is devoted to deal with Sri Lanka’s close relationship with China which is the sore point for both the USA and India while giving the impression that Rajapaksa administration has foolishly antagonized the West for nothing. There is no dispute that MR government of late mishandled issues of international relations mainly due to the absence of a well thought out strategy and committed, efficient and professional diplomats. However the real reason for the hostility towards Sri Lanka by the West, specially the US, and India for that matter, was that President Mahinda Rajapaksa adamantly refused to yield into external pressures designed to meet hegemonic agendas in his fight against LTTE armed separatism. This was a major reason for MR to get closer to China; a country so far has not interfered with internal political issues of Sri Lanka. TIME article which goes to millions of readers outside Sri Lanka has, I believe deliberately, missed all these aspects in its analysis.

Here my intention is not to examine, paragraph by paragraph the biased nature of the article but to highlight some critical omissions on its part thereby giving an idea to the public how the Western corporate media use their near monopoly in mass communication to ‘manufacture consent’ not only in their own countries but all over the world. TIME article begins with the following sentence:

“When the Sri Lankan President’s motorcade encounters a red light now on the streets of capital Colombo, it does something unthinkable just months ago-it stops and waits for a green signal. The convoy itself is much smaller than it once was, down to three or four cars and two motorcycles from the as many as 16 cars and numerous outriders that sped through this port city until the man at the centre of the procession-the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa-encountered an unexpected red light on 8 January”.

I have no idea whether these numbers are correct. True there were many ministers of the MR government who had penchant for speeding off along public roads in a fleet of expensive vehicles with headlights on, surrounded by army commandos wielding automatic guns, violating all traffic rules and terrorizing people. But the fact remains that President Rajapaksa (even Gotabhaya Rajapaksa for that matter) needed and needs strong security as he is constantly under death threat from LTTE remnants. When President Bill Clinton while in office once visited Tokyo, highly trained 28,000 strong security and police force was deployed to protect him from possible terrorist attacks. The Indian army general who led his troops into Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, the most sacred shrine of Sikhism, to crush Khalistan fighters, was murdered by Sikh assassins some ten years after his retirement. So is terrorism. TIME surely must know all this.

As the article highlights in a praising note President Sirisena’s motorcade stops at red lights and waits for the green light to proceed on. While it is being appreciated one should not forget the fact that he is accused of violating the constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, the basic law of the country, by appointing the leader of a minority party in Parliament as the Prime Minister, dismissing the legally installed government existed at that time, and substituting himself to the judiciary in the case of ousting then Chief Justice, Mohan Peiris. TIME has, wittingly or unwittingly, failed to mention this sort of ‘other side of the story’ making a mockery of its claim of objective reporting.

For those who are familiar with TIME history and its practice this kind of journalism is not surprising. TIME magazine was founded by Henry Luce and his Yale classmate Briton Hadden in 1923 whose professed aim was “to keep men well-informed”. It became immensely popular within few years. Even during that early period its practice of ignoring and manipulating facts was decried by many. After Hadden’s death in 1928 Luce took over full control of the magazine. He was staunchly against Communism and lost no opportunity to attack and ridicule the ideology he hated. During the late 1940s and early 1950s he used the magazine to promote his favorite causes, such as American support for Chiang Kai-shek in China, and election of Eisenhower and Nixon to the White House.

When Luce was criticized he retorted, “I am a Protestant, a Republican, and a free- enterpriser, which means I am biased in favor of God, Eisenhower and the stock holders of Time Inc.” So he had a master to serve!

(The writer is a reputed analyst who served as the Communications officer at the Colombo Branch of the UN and then media spokesman of the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. This article first appeared in the Island, private own daily based in Colombo)