A note on media integrity

By Malinda Seneviratne

(March 29, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is fashionable these days to say there is a conspiracy against journalists and the media in general. In fact the purported lack of media freedom is often referenced as indication of Sri Lanka being a ‘failed state’ and used in legitimizing calls for intervention in our affairs by foreign powers.

Some time ago, ‘The Nation’ commenting on atrocious reportage regarding a rumour about LTTE infiltrators in the Southern Province, editorially opined that one must expect third rate journalism when there is a fifth class media policy. I’ve often wondered about this contention and have suspected that it is the reverse that’s probably more accurate.

I believe that it is downright silly of any Government to see our media as a threat. The greatest threat to media freedom in this country is the media itself. Yes, us.

We are good at pointing fingers but slow to acknowledge wrong-doing on our part. We are good at demanding transparency, accountability and honesty, but these are things that we treat like rubbish in our own affairs. We have, as a result, severely compromised our credibility. When we say ‘media freedom’, anyone can turn around and say ‘you have no right to talk’. Vilification is our watchword, selective reportage of fact our weapon of choice. We are bad at telling things as they are, bad at obtaining clarification, lazy when it comes to cross-checking claims but exceptionally good at editorializing.

Sirasa FMs news story

On Friday, the 27th of March, 2007, Sirasa FM broadcast a news story regarding financial fraud perpetrated by the Manager of a SANASA (acronym for the thrift and credit cooperative movement) primary society. SIRASA reported that the Manager of the SANASA Development Bank had stolen a large sum of money. Now Sirasa can be forgiven for not understanding the difference between the SANASA Development Bank and a SANASA Primary Society that uses the tag ‘bank’ in its name; the two being different and legally unrelated entities, the latter registered under the Cooperative Act and the former not. What is unforgivable is that Sirasa did not feel it necessary to cross check the story or ask for a comment from any responsible official at the SANASA Development Bank. It treated information provided by an anonymous caller as fact and made an erroneous report that can have serious repercussions for the SANASA Development Bank, especially in a climate where the integrity of financial institutions have been seriously compromised by monumental fraud.

I don’t know if the SANASA Development Bank will sue Sirasa, but I believe it should. This kind of irresponsibility and criminal neglect of the fundamental tenets of the profession feeds the general belief that there is a concerted effort to destroy local banks. SANASA is a people’s movement and the Development Bank was built not by the infusion of tax payers’ money or investment by the filthy rich but by ordinary people.

A second piece of ‘news’ caught my eye last week. On Monday, The Island reported that an NGO called PANOS South Asia had been called before the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) investigating INGOs and NGOs based in Sri Lanka. The country representative for PANOS is reported to have said that she had once submitted an article to www.tamilnet.com on the request of the late Lasantha Wickrematunga. It is interesting that the version that appears in The Island’s sister paper in Sinhala, Divaina, states that this person had in fact worked for Tamilnet.

PANOS is supposed to have paid money to a set of journalists for submitting a specific number of articles which had to be approved by a set of advisors who ‘were prominent INGO operatives involved in mega foreign funded projects’.

I support without reservation the mandate of the PSC. We have had INGOs and NGOs acting as though there are our colonial masters and alternative government, respectively, for far too long. On the other hand, this report is mischievous in that it uses a PSC hearing to take a pot shot at Lasantha Wickrematunga. There is a certain disregard for procedural ethics in reporting on what transpired at a PSC hearing even before the committee submitted its report. Even if that was ok, the story is full of allusions, implies many questions which are left unanswered.

Here are some of the questions that my friend Shamindra Ferdinando, who wrote the piece, could have asked and obtained answers for: When did PANOS pay these journalists, what were the exact terms of their contracts, for how long were they ‘employed’ by PANOS, who were they, what did they write, who were in the ‘overseeing’ committee, how many articles had the witness (a Tamil married to a Japanese) written to the Tamilnet and what were they about?

Proper political context

Does the PSC have a full list of all those employed by PANOS under whatever terms of contract, their relevant job descriptions, the amounts of money they were paid and for how long? When did this happen? That too is important for us to locate the issue in its proper political context. As it stands, there are more questions than answers and that doesn’t do justice to the reader’s needs and moreover opens the report in question to the suspicion of mal intent. I am convinced, having worked with him for a long time, that Shamindra always puts country and the public interest above individual needs.

I want The Island or some other newspaper to do a full write-up about PANOS because it is not enough to operate in half-tones if you are a responsible media institution. The work of the PSC is far too important for it to be derailed by half-baked investigations, vague accusations and using ‘evidence’ from incomplete and as yet inconclusive investigation to settle accounts with someone else, even if that individual, in this case Lasantha, has had a pretty sordid track-record in terms of relations with the LTTE.

In the Sirasa case, it is an institution that is targeted for vilification; in The Island and Divaina, at best, an individual is painted black (the substantiation is unconvincing) and worse, is employed to buttress another, less related argument.

Whether the said individual was an LTTE sympathizer or not is something that I am sure the investigations would reveal. There is no evidence in any of the two reports to make anyone conclude that PANOS is a koti-hithawadee NGO (an NGO partial to the LTTE) or that its purpose was to purchase journalists to write anti-Sri Lanka articles. The person is a Tamil, we are told, and for this reason along every care should be taken to ensure that she is given fair trial. When investigation crosses that invisible line that marks the end of integrity and the beginning of vilification, we get a situation like the proverbial kiri kalaya (pot of milk) being contaminated by the goma binduwa (drop of cow dung). No one wants this to happen to the PSC.

Let PANOS have its say. Let the evidence be shown, the ‘for’ and the ‘against’. We want the whole NGO/INGO picture and the diga palala of PANOS South Asia in that now-so-nice story. Lasantha, in this regard, is but a distraction.

These are but two news-incidents, if you will, that caught my attention this past week and only confirmed to me that we, as journalists, have a long way to go to get even close to the moral high ground we so badly need to have if we are to play a positive role in the affairs of our country. It is but a quick and short interjection of objection to ourselves as a tribe. I am sure we can be better.

Perhaps what we need is a truly critical and self-critical organization of journalists.

-Sri Lanka Guardian