(SOUTH ASIAN) MEDIA MENDACITY

It is time that the mother of all hypocrisies was squarely addressed, and revealed in a way that there will be a closure to all this nonsense of painting black as white and white as black. This week for example - - an organization calling itself SAMM – South Asia Media Monitor we presume, had released a report stating that since there were no deaths of media personnel in Sri Lanka, the country’s media freedom Index scores better than that of Pakistan, for instance!

That some of Sri Lanka’s media personnel were killed NOT due to reasons associated with what they wrote is a matter that will come into full light sooner rather than later, even though this is common knowledge to many who know the inner workings of the local media scene. There were those who were card carrying members of armed political outfits, for instance -- a fact made obvious by the way these journalists bodies were taken to rebel held areas for respects to be paid by the so called rebel leaders who conferred the ‘highest honours’ on them.

There were blackmailers among those scribes who were killed as well – those who apparently were in the practice of extorting money from public personalities who were threatened with ‘exposure’ in the newspapers if they did not pay up.

None of this background stopped the so called media monitors from black-marking Sri Lanka for the alleged bad record with regard to media rights. Neither did the fact that the majority of the journalists who sought political asylum in foreign lands were plain Visa hunters who wanted the good life in European capitals, have any bearing on the bleeding hearts’ assessment of the dollar-paid media monitors, whose investigations on the veracity of these asylum claims rarely led them beyond their noses.

Now, since by their own half-baked methods these people cannot slot Sri Lanka at the bottom of the pile with regard to media freedom, they have resorted to vilifying certain media houses such as the Lake House newspapers, ITN and Rupavahini for instance, for heaping verbal abuse on independent journalists and ‘calling them traitors.’

This is probably with reference to a few instances this may have happened before the UNHRC sessions in Geneva last year for instance – but the fact is that none of the human rights activists, so called, who were in Geneva, or the so called ‘independent journalists’ in Geneva, were ever harmed as a result of these alleged name-calling and labeling incidents.

But not a word was said by SAMM about the outright lies and crass fabrications reported to by the ‘independent’ journalists that ran anonymous websites during these Geneva sessions and still do. This is how the blackest of the black are portrayed as whiter than white by these doughty media fighters!

If these media monitors had an iota of respect for the truth that they swear by, they would have had the common decency to check the enormous damage to people, to reputations and the country as a result of these phantom websites that are operated by shady characters who cannot be traced because they operate in complete anonymity working from some remote hideout - - perhaps a dingy basement in some alleyway in a European capital.

But SAMM and other journalists organizations are mute with regard to these websites, and in fact they often want these sites to be protected in the name of media freedom to carry on their (… by any yardstick) repulsive agendas of tarnishing the good names of people and countries, and making the kind of diabolical mischief that keeps investors and well-wishers away from a nation that is resurgent after years of fratricidal confrontation.

That organizations such as these in essence in the name of free media and free expression seek to skew the reality to this extent is such an irony -- because all this is done in the name of lofty principles, by those who clothe themselves in the garb of righteousness. As usual the hypocrisy reeks to the heavens. One thing is certain - - it still feels good to be truly free journalists who can, without caring a whit for how bleeding heart liberals look at us, continue to expose these pond-scum humbugs.