Sri Lanka: the reader emerges the loser

BY MAYA RANGANATHAN| IN Media Practice | 23/04/2009

In the months to come perhaps a clearer picture on the omissions and commissions of all involved may emerge. But the media, with its coverage of the war that is hopefully drawing to a close in the Sri Lanka¿s East, is now effectively contributing to silencing the public sphere rather than providing one.

Even the Internet that has been touted as a medium with the potential of providing a vibrant public sphere that theorist Habermas envisaged,  has ended up simulating the situation on the ground in Sri Lankan. The virtual world is now a deep, dark alley where scribes, academics, activists and even common men who dare raise their voices against perceived injustice can be silenced with humiliation, threats of annihilation and social ostracism.

Consequently, most dispassionate observers are forced to err on the side of caution and conclude that no report can be entirely true or entirely false. With the media relying on Sri Lankan defence sources reporting that the Army is taking precautions to protect the civilians and the pro-LTTE publications alleging to the contrary, news on the dreaded war in Sri Lanka is now a string of guesstimates, rumours, allegations and questions.

The readers¿ confusion is perhaps best reflected, ironically by Tamil Nadu politicians who, thanks to the ensuing Parliamentary elections, have been pushed to the point of articulating a stand on the issue. While the AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa has moved from being a rabid critic of separatism to a supporter of the Sri LankanTamil cause, Chief Minister M Karunanidhi is still pondering over fundamental issues as to whether the LTTE is a terrorist outfit or a freedom-fighting group, as to whether leader V Prabhakaran should be regarded as a foe or a friend and as to whether he must toe the Congress line in the interest of national politics or tout the Tamil cause to retain regional clout.

The muddied media coverage of these dreaded times have indeed thrown up some significant issues in media studies and journalism that even seem to draw into question some fundamental premises on which media work.  Objectivity, the much-bandied term in J-school classrooms, has been an early victim. With the war zone being out of bounds for media and international observers, the sources of information have been reduced to two groups: first, the Sri Lankan defence ministry and secondly, the pro-LTTE Tamilnet. With both having a clear agenda of propagating a particular ideology, most publications have had to repeat their claims to be seen as ¿objective¿.

Interestingly, a study done among the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in Australia revealed that most readers did not rate ¿objectivity¿ based on the journalistic methods adopted by a publication. They veered towards publication which reported events that they could relate to, based on their experiences. A reader who while living in Sri Lanka suffered at the hands of the Sri Lankan government swore by Tamilnet¿s commitment to ¿truth¿, while one ¿harassed¿ by the LTTE lay more in store by the government sources. Thus, in the list of  ¿objective¿ sources figured the pro-LTTE Tamilnet and Tamil Canadian and among the ¿biased¿ publications were the online ¿University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna¿, which has been consistently reporting abuses by all parties in the island the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE included, and of course the ¿Brahmin-owned¿ The Hindu, Dinamalar, newspapers published from Chennai.

With most of the media lending themselves to classification as ¿pro-LTTE¿ or ¿anti-LTTE¿, a study of the reportage over the past year when the war escalated to reach its crescendo now, surely offers a blue print for propaganda. A majority of the online publications that deal with the Sri Lankan Tamil issue and the regional media in Tamil Nadu have been quick to cash in on the ethnic angle. From defending the cause and the means to achieve a separate state of Eelam, to engaging in a dialogue with the critics by countering allegations, to repudiating the others¿ claims, to obfuscating facts and figures, to remaining silent, to glorifying the leader, they have indeed taken the gullible reader on a roller coaster ride.

The reverses in fortunes have also prompted a role reversal with the Sri Lankan government becoming more vociferous to the extent of dismissing media freedom with scarcely-disguised contempt. Major General Palita Fernando, the military liaison officer in Trincomalee, while responding to a question on why journalists were not allowed to interview the evacuated wounded people declared, ¿that¿s the way we want it. Simple answer." This was aired by Australian public service broadcaster SBS ¿Dateline¿ on March 15, 2009.  And emboldened by the turn of events, writers have begun to shed self-censorship to ridicule the LTTE leader. Online newspapers and blogs are rife with sparring matches between the pro and anti-LTTE lobbies with most comments sinking way below the levels of accepted standards of decency.

The army¿s victories on the other hand seem have tempered the pro-LTTE publications. The bravado of the pro-LTTE publications where the initial LTTE losses in war were attributed to clever military strategy, gave way to a phase of complete denial and then to a brief period of silence. The coverage then changed to one of fixing the blame with India and the international community, berated for their indifference, to glorifying the cornered LTTE leader. On May 24, 2009 when two LTTE senior leaders had surrendered to the Sri Lankan forces, Tamilnet held that Tiger officials claimed that most civilians took refuge with the LTTE and no mention of the surrender, while Junior Vikatan featured an article on Prabhakaran¿s friends in Tamil Nadu.

Enmeshed in all this coverage is the question of ethics. How ethical is it for journalists to report and pontificate based on information from sources that are at best suspect? How relevant is the contextualising of online media within the framework of journalism when they clear function as tools of propaganda?  In a country where bloggers can face charges of criminal intimidation, how culpable is a publication that allows its readers to indulge in defamation in its feedback columns?