LOUD AND UNTRUE

A hysterical tract in one of the daily newspapers of today prompts this response. A banshee rant of an editorial comment contends that the war has given way to crime in Sri Lanka, the inference being that the people of this country are not free though the war is over.

Granted that newspapers might survive by the power of the uncivil rant and the banshee shriek of sensationalism, but that does not mean that facts have to suffer precipitously as a result of it. Yes, newspapers do have to sell, but editorial writers however owe a modicum of truth and reality to the reader, and to rattle off the five or six crime headlines of the day and say that a 'crime wave' has replaced the insecurity of war --- well, it is sensationally unbecoming.

Open the newspapers of any country in any day and age, and we know what the best selling newspapers sold on stories of money, sex and crime. The same comments made now about the 'disgusting crime wave' could have been made 50 years ago, if somebody opened the journals of that time, and thought it fit to fulminate editorially about the subject. This was before Prabhakaran was born, and the terrorist war had been dreamt of in the wildest of nightmares of the worst of pessimists of this country.

But the fact remains that the same comments that are being made about 'a crime cataclysm' could have been made then as now. Collecting the crime stories in a newspaper on a given day and saying that this is indicative of a lack of governance or a general decline in security, is akin to visiting the accident ward any evening and stating that the internal combustion engine should be outlawed.

As there were motor accidents from the time the automobile was invented, crime has been reported -- and sensationalized - - from the time guns were invented, and the press came into being to record their loud reports when they went off with a bang.

So, this type of ranting newspaper comment is trite as it is dishonest. Such are not merely blatantly self serving in that they seek to sensationalize and increase circulations, they are also lazy to the extent they that fly smack against the face of the hard facts.

The recent comparative global crime statistics indicate that in the past year on record, Sri Lanka had a middling intentional homicide rate that was lesser than countries such as the United States of America and Thailand! There has been no significant increase in this murder rate this year, though the bizarre nature of some of the killings in Kahawatte for instance may have given rise to newspaper articles about them dripping with blood!

This is not a figment of this leader writer's imagination. Go to the UNODC (UN Office on Drugs and Crime) website, and peruse the comparative crime statistics. Sri Lanka has a middling intentional homicide rate, which is one of the indicators of crime, and as an additional fact, it could be observed by any browser of this site that there are three separate gradations of crime rates below Sri Lanka's ratings bracket, which is relatively median. What that means, is that there are three levels of worse crime, comparatively, in countries across the globe, than Sri Lanka's rate of criminal homicides.

Rigorous research is not necessary to arrive at these conclusions. If there was an iota of a sense of responsibility among those who seek to edify the public on these matters, the truth would have been obvious.

What can be suspected - - safely - - is that the writers of these tracts themselves know that an aggregation of the newspaper crime stories of the day, however gruesome the crimes may appear, is not a measure of the crime statistics of the times! Horrific crimes have been committed from the time knives and other sharp weapons were invented, and if anybody needs to inform himself of this fact, he should visit the Lake House archives, which are safely preserved in microfiche, in the premises where this newspaper is printed at ANCL.

Crime is as old as man himself, and newspaper commentators on crime -- and crime writers -- practice what may be called one of the oldest professions -- if not the oldest, though it should never mimic what is commonly referred to as the oldest ...

In short, it's, well, almost criminal to sensationalize and to misinform. That it's nothing new in this country is not in any way redeeming.