It’s this crazy media, stupid
depending very much on the news of the day.
When a report triumphantly says that “none offered a response” or that “no one accepted the challenge” it surely shows a lack of understanding of the day to day working of a newspaper. It is not a 24-hour news cycle.
That is another reason why I think that Prime Minister Wickremesinghe was not a journalist in his early years. Had he been one he would not have made the mistake he did in asking assurances from reporters covering the event, though it seems a telling point to the average reader.
But one must admit that some of the charges levelled at the media are not entirely baseless. The quality of Sri Lankan journalism has deteriorated over the years. This is mainly because of the proliferation of print and electronic media outlets.
With technological advances and easier and cheaper means of setting up news outlets political parties, politicians and entrepreneurs seeking political influence to advance their prospects rather than principles, have opened up the media space providing a multiplicity of sources.
This speaks for the breathing space the government has permitted for a plethora of viewpoints to exist side by side leaving the public to draw its own conclusions with regard to the reliability of the news and views on offer and who to trust.
But this has had its downside. The sudden expansion of the news industry has thrown open the doors for more staff to feed this growth.
The result has been the influx of untrained and inexperienced persons happy to be called journalists. But the consequences are dire. How often have we heard words such as “misquoted”, “misreported” “falsified”, “falsehoods”, “out of context” and “vendetta” used to castigate the print and electronic media by those who speak first and think later as they try to wriggle out of frequent contretemps.
They are not entirely wrong. But this has become easier for those directing their accusing fingers at the media to get away with it largely because this unplanned and unprepared expansion of Sri Lanka’s media world has made it possible.
One has only to read some of the plentiful websites or platforms as some call them, that exist in our cyber world (if that is the phrase for it) not to mention some print media to be struck by the spelling and grammatical errors that abound.
When the forward- looking Esmond Wickremesinghe, Ranil’s father, managed the editorial department of Lake House he recruited university graduates, especially those who had read English, economics, politics and history for their degree because he considered them more widely read. He was proved correct as their wider knowledge embellished their writing as they picked up the essentials of journalism.
Today we are caught up in a situation where inexperienced and untrained men and women hold positions that only the well- trained should. That is why some are unable to distinguish between news and comment and so inject comment into their news reports.
That distinguished and long serving editor of the highly respected Manchester Guardian (later Guardian) C.P. Scott writing on the 100th anniversary of the newspaper made a remark that still stands as a beacon in the world of journalism.
He wrote “Comment is free, facts are sacred”. I am proud to have served that newspaper as a correspondent from the late 1960s and learned how crucial it was to follow that dictum.
One wishes that politicians and some journalists realise the importance of this principle. It would leave much less room for critics of the media to direct their barbs at their favourite target and others to understand the distinction that made the Manchester Guardian a widely respected newspaper in the journalistic world.
With technological advances and easier and cheaper means of setting up news outlets political parties, politicians and entrepreneurs seeking political influence to advance their prospects rather than principles, have opened up the media space providing a multiplicity of sources.