Sun-shades on 24/7

Self censors among journalists

by Pearl Thevanayagam

(June 12, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Journalists are not the favoured group of politicians but they are quintessential tools for them to propagate their agenda.

Island editor Manik De Silva, despite his many decades in journalism, has got his sun shades on full time and is impervious to the truth of the war that supposedly ended terrorism in our soil. Although a veteran journalist and a nephew of that statesman politician Dr Colvin R. De Silva, he has been brainwashed by his very long stay at Lake House where he had to pay obeisance to whichever party comes to power for his survival as editor of Daily News depended on saying, “ Yes Sir, Yes Sir, Three bags full Sir”.

Colvin must be turning in his grave and wondering what ailment had befallen his nephew.

His repeated mantra that the international community is ganging up on a sovereign nation which minds its own business and professes Buddhism for its majority Sinhala populace blinds him to stark realities. The truth that the government annihilated a good proportion of Tamils and is hell-bent on ethnic- cleansing is too bitter a pill for him to swallow.

He refuses to believe that war crimes were committed by the government security forces. What can you expect from a stubborn old hack who is now scouring Wikileaks to prove that Tiananmen massacre did not happen and therefore civilians were not killed in their thousands by the government. He conveniently misses out that Wikileaks also said that Beijing massacre occurred.

His argument that the 600 policemen murdered by the LTTE 21 years ago when ordered by President Premadasa to surrender to them and the West was silent then does not exonerate the government from war crimes. How about a ping-pong of accusations ranging from the murders of Tamils in ’58 and ’83 and the JVP massacre of 1971 and ‘89/’90.

One crime does not make another a lesser crime.

The logic of Manik reminds one of Abraham Lincoln’s repartee to the famous Freeport Doctrine in which his senatorial opponent Stephen Douglas supported the continuity of Black slavery. He described it as, `as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death.’

Then there is Shamindra Ferdinando, Island’s faithful servant and a Tamil by ethnicity but would not admit to it, had to retract statements and tuck in his tail in mighty haste such as that TNA met with the Russian ambassador and pleaded with him not to support the Rajapakse Government.

Having said this Manik is not one for obtaining favours from the government. One has to admit he is above narrow material or political gains. The veteran journalist used to use his own moped and not ask for Lake House transport which is used by most other editors.

Lake House is a place where journalists are easily brainwashed and programmed to think only in terms of supporting any party that comes to power since it is the mouth organ of the governing party.

Among print publications from Colombo the only newspaper with some guts is The Sunday Leader which despite its founding editor Lasantha Wickrematunga being murdered in cold blood two and a half years ago by this government carries on exposing corruption, malpractices and nepotism in the government and the truth of the war crimes.

It is true that journalists in Sri Lanka are very much an endangered species but there is absolutely no need for independent newspapers to genuflect before the powers. Prageeth Ekneliyagoda’s cartoons were far too powerful and in fact reached the wider audience much more than the reports English speaking sycophantic hacks put out without leaving their comfort zone of Colombo.

How many journalists who are writing about the war crimes have actually visited the war zones and interviewed Tamil civilians? Yet there are reams of reports denying that the government did not commit war crimes.

Murders of heroic journalists such as Richard de Soysa, Keerthi De Alwis, Lasantha, Sivaram, Nimalarajan, Nadesan and more than 30 others could have been prevented had the media organisations stood together and championed their freedom of expression and most of all their increase in salaries and providing pensions which would have liberated them paying subservience to the government and being compelled to accept bribes from politicians and businessmen.

Nowadays you do not hear a whimper from the champions who set out to broad-base Lake House since they have been bought over with perks or have joined foreign news agencies where they enjoy far better salaries than their local counterparts.

Until such time journalists in Sri Lanka unite to free themselves from the shackles of state subjugation they will continue to prostitute themselves before the powers.