All the news that’s fit to print

MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: He’s throwing himself in all directions, like a rodeo rider on a bucking bronco, lurching hither and thither hanging on for life to the neck of the mustang.

Everything is grist to his impatient mill, from the piety of the Maha Sangha, to the cost of living, school admissions, media freedom and government fund raising abroad.

The leader of the UNP is in a frenzy of activity in what seems a desperate bid to defeat the government, and change the course of his life to the better with a grab on power that has been eluding him for so long.

This man, who was not known for frequent interventions in parliament, is suddenly on his feet at the drop of an Order Paper, and his voice gets ever more strident as he urges the people to rise against the government at the Jana Rala carnival sessions of the wild jumbo alliance.

Ranil Wickremesinghe is suddenly showing himself to be a man for all seasons, in an attempt to salvage himself from the image of the born loser that he has been cast for so long.

There is nothing he will not touch, if it shows even the most remote chance of propelling him to his much coveted seat of power. But ever so often he comes a cropper with is choice of issues.

Media freedom

Take his sudden concern for media freedom. He’s discovering the most unusual threats to media freedom and awakening to the reality that freedom of expression is at the very core of democracy.

I remember the time when he was a senior minister in the Premadasa Government, and the many exchanges we had when he was the Cabinet spokesman, on the threats the media faced those days.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, New York had just begun discovering the existence of Sri Lanka, and Reporters Sans Frontiers was noticing Sri Lanka as little more than a blip on its radar.

That is the time when we really had to fight for media freedom, and take that message of freedom and democracy to the entire country.

That was after Richard de Zoysa was killed by the goons of the Government of which today’s phoney champion of media freedom was a key minister. It is good to recall that the UNP’s love for media freedom was so intense at the time, that it intervened to stop the trial into the murder of Richard de Zoysa.

Their passion for media freedom did not stop at that. It opposed and prevented the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry to probe Richard’s killing, too.

Anyone who gets hold of the Hansard report of the debate in Parliament on the setting up of such a commission will not need much more instruction to know the importance of not taking Wickremesinghe’s love for media freedom at face value.

But guess what his new test of media freedom is. It is not about how the media reports, comments or not on the burning issues of the country. It is not about the self-censorship that is creeping into most sections of our media, for a variety of reasons.

It is not about the failure of the media, by and large, to be a more dispassionate and less partisan player in seeking a resolution to the national crisis arising from the ethnic issue.

It is all about how much of Wickremesinghe says in public is reported in newspapers. He wants it all dished out, I mean what he says. He is not bothered whether it can be libelous or defamatory of others.

He has no concern that his utterances at public rallies about insane kings may not be what the people wish to have served up to them in their favourite newspapers.

He is so impressed with his own drivel and hogwash uttered in public, that he sees a threat to the very foundations of democracy if that is not reported as it was said, untouched by editorial hand or pencil.

Freedom Hero

Many years ago the International Press Institute considered Esmond Wickremesinghe, the father of Ranil W, a Press Freedom Hero. He was best known for his capable management of newspapers.

It is a pity that Ranil did not learn from his father the important role that an editor plays in a newspaper, and how the editor is the last defence the reader has against those who will be only too pleased to use a newspaper to suit one’s fancy.

Ranil once told me that his entry, into politics and not journalism, was only because the Sirimavo Bandaranaike Government took over Lake House in 1973.

Had he followed his father into Lake House, he would have learnt much more about newspaper editors, and how important it is for readers that they use their discretion in keeping out of print what they consider unsuitable, disgusting, unwanted, or in any event just a waste of newsprint and ink.

There are reams of such balderdash that comes to the desk of an editor every day, and it is no easy task to decide what is finally fit to print.

This reminds me of the famous motto of the New York Times - “All The News That’s Fit To Print”. Whatever Ranil W may think of the editors of three leading Sinhala dailies, who he has pilloried for their alleged morning religious rituals, it is their task to pick what’s fit to print in their newspapers and it is the biggest threat to media freedom when any politician gathers enough pluck to criticise any editor for not printing what he said, anywhere, anytime and about anyone.

This latest Don Quixote of Sri Lankan politics is obviously blissfully unaware of what he is inviting for the media in Sri Lanka, with his claim that media freedom, and by association, democracy itself is under threat, for newspapers not publishing all of what he said.

Little does he realise that what is sauce for this goose, must also be sauce for other gander, ever so eager just like him to have their every inane, asinine, shocking or vulgar utterance published in newspapers without the discretion of the editor’s blue pencil.

I’m sure you can think of many others, especially in politics, whose utterances can always be best kept out of the columns of newspapers, and grateful that we still have a media that is not as “free” as the quixotic machinations of Ranil W and his political ilk would want it to be.

When a man who claims to fight for media freedom, equates that freedom with a self-proclaimed right to have his every utterance published verbatim in newspapers, the time cannot be far when he says that his words must always be on page one, and later that it should always be the headline.

The danger is that such thinking is not strange to the UNP, and it is very close in kinship to Ranil W, knowing how his uncle JRJ manipulated the media. Our memories are not that short to have forgotten how Ranil W manipulated the media in his brief spell as Prime Minister from 2002 to 2004.

What we now see is a man who is determined to manipulate the media and have it cast in his own image. Watch out, for I see a demagogue on the march.