The yawning information imbalance

It should be now quite obvious that Sri Lanka is faced with the challenge of filling an international information void about this country which is being exploited aggressively by her critics.

This lacuna is being exposed by the adverse publicity sections of the Western media are currently generating about this country on the multifarious issues stemming from her conflict. The controversial Channel 4 videos easily come to mind as some of the more destructive tools of misinformation which are doing the gravest damage to this country.

‘Media Interventionism’ is among the latest phrases which have surfaced to describe this species of victimization of the developing countries by those quarters that own and control Western media outlets and agencies which are prone to scurrilously vilifying the up and coming countries of the Third World. This process is also referred to as a ‘media beat-up’ and we are told that projecting a Third World government, which is not to the liking of the Western hegemonic powers, in a bad light, is one of the motives of such mud-slinging.

There is no denying that such one-sided or biased portrayals of the affairs of the developing world could have highly damaging consequences for the countries concerned.

The victimization suffered by Sri Lanka at the UNHRC in March is just one glaring example. While it is clear that Sri Lanka was pitted against the hegemonic powers of the Western world in that confrontation, the ability of these oppressive sections to communicate to the world a most damning account of Sri Lanka in relation to the concluding stages of her conflict in particular compounded the problems Sri Lanka had to contend with.

Therefore, Sri Lanka’s Western critics made highly destructive use of their control over sections of the international media. A considerable proportion of Western opinion was influenced decisively against Sri Lanka on account of this power over the media and it would seem that this too was an important factor in the West’s ability to treat this country unjustly.

Looking back, therefore, it would seem that Sri Lanka’s inability to match the West fully in keeping the world reliably informed about developments in this country too had a bearing on the final outcome in Geneva.

This should not come as a surprise because Sri Lanka was pitting herself against some of the most preponderant powers of the current global political order.

But Sri Lanka’s experience needs to be considered an eye-opener by the rest of the developing world. Whereas, a single developing country could not be expected to match the big powers’ control over the Western media, the developing world as a whole could make more than a dent in this communication imbalance by seeking to rectify it collectively.

By pooling their resources and their collective energies the Third World could put the record straight to the world on their contemporary realities. Coming together and mustering financial and material resources besides putting their hearts and minds together seems to be the challenge.

A peep into history would reveal that there is nothing entirely new in these questions. Several decades ago, in the early seventies of the last century, at the height of the crippling oil crisis of those times, the developing countries realized the importance of not only having a New International Economic Order but of also evolving a New International Information Order. Very rightly, the Third World felt that the struggle for economic emancipation from the world’s oppressive and parasitic powers should be accompanied by an effort on the part of the developing world to be independent and self-supportive in the field of information and communication.

The Third World’s inadequacies in the latter area deprived it of the capability to counter Western disinformation about the developing world and to put the record straight on the issues confronting it.

The time seems right to revisit the New International Information Order concept. To the extent possible, the developing world needs to be in a position to counter disinformation about their conditions and their realities.

This could be achieved a great deal through a collective effort by the developing countries to bring into being news agencies and media organizations that could independently project to the world truthful and undistorted news and views about themselves.