| by Pearl Thevanayagam
(February 01, 2013, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) So we are celebrating Independence Day in two days’ time. We should be celebrating independence from colonial suppression and freedom from the shackles of those who chose not to uphold individual liberty which is enshrined in our constitution. This includes independence of the judiciary among other things. And we all know what happened to this most cherished liberty. It died a natural death in the hands of those now wielding power.
Which brings us to the subject of sex, the pitfalls many male journalists succumb to, since women have been told to lie down and think of their country. To a journalist, hamstrung by deadlines and death threats, sex is sine qua non in that it gives them that much relief from the daily grind of churning up news when there is no news. Ergo, journalists become pawns in the hands of their benefactors; namely media moguls and government.
What is it with media personalities and sex offences? First it was the stark revelation of Sir Jimmy Saville, the DJ and TV presenter on BBC, a one time hospital porter who turned out to be a paedophile and who was seen as a large benefactor for children’s cause, Andrew Marr, the political correspondent of BBC and now Stuart Hall of the same.
Jeffrey Archer was once a best selling novelist and Tory MP bestowed with knighthood from the queen.. But his dilly-dalliance with prostitutes made his wife Mary Archer, a wooden female, a martyr and put paid to his success which left him languishing at HM’s Pleasure and his novels no longer grace Waterstones. They are now available at cut-prices and 50p per copy in charity shops. The late Robin Cook, foreign secretary in John Major’s government became front page news in the British Media and the PM himself was implicated in an illicit affair with one of his ministers, Ms Edwina Currie.
But this aside, Julian Assenje of Wikileaks fame, is now an exile in Nicaragua wanted on rape charges.
Closer home, our journalists are scot-free since sex offences are considered part and parcel of the profession. I can still recall a senior journalist in the Observer who used to promise publicity for nubile models in return for sexual favours; and he was seen by all as a happily married man with two children and now climbing the ladder of success as a diplomat; age notwithstanding.
Until Aids reared its ugly head, sex in sunny Sri Lanka was synonymous with power and prestige. Pulling a bird was not plucking a chicken; it is grabbing the nearest female who is not a man’s legal wife. Craving sex for men is animal rage which is forbidden to women who are duty-bound to suppress their own sexual urge for fear of being branded fast and promiscuous.
But hey-ho this is Sri Lanka, the epicentre of God’s chosen venue for Adam and Eve where illicit love was launched in the name of a serpent which brought the downfall of Adam who thought he was merely biting into an apple whereas he was enslaved for life tending to his progeny created by his own folly through impregnating the devious Eve who the serpent managed to mesmerise.
So, should sex outside marriage be banned and brought into the statutes wherein the whole of the cabinet would be hauled up before the courts or limited to journalists and politicians as long as they side with the government.
The way the cookie crumbles, illicit sex is accepted norm - mostly for those in power - and it is not the prerogative of politicians alone any more. Press freedom, as a colleague used to say, is the chance to press against females in a crowded bus and nothing whatsoever to do with the inalienable right to freedom of expression in a democracy.
A recent poetry by Sonali Ratnayake implicates a female journalist as pandering to the sexual needs of her peers and parliamentarians. Whether there is any veracity in this mud-slinging, popular perception is journalists are sex fiends. No research findings point to this anomaly and we are yet to find out whether a secret hormone in a journalist’s circulatory system is the cause of this perverted behaviour.
There are more pressing subjects this writer should pay attention to but having had enough doses of horribly depressing news she needs to divert attention and take a breather before SL is up for its UPR (Universal Periodic Review) at the UN in a few weeks time for its accountability over war crimes.
(The writer has been a journalist for 23 years and worked at Weekend, The Daily News, Sunday Leader and Weekend Express in Sri Lanka as sub-editor, news reporter and news editor. She was Colombo Correspondent for Times of India and has contributed to Wall Street Journal; Washington Bureau, where she was on work experience from The Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley, California. Currently residing in UK she is also co-founder of EJN (Exiled Journalists Network) UK in 2005 the membership of which is 200 from 40 countries. She can be reached at pearltheva@hotmail.com)
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