GOOD NEWS IS NOT NEWS?!
The surest sign that Sri Lanka is a functional democracy that
is a shining beacon of hope for her people, and the entire Asian
region perhaps, is the fact that newspapermen these days are
looking for human interest stories on education, social issues
etc., to fill their news and comment spaces. War is definitely
not on the news radar, there being no hostilities since 2009.
The brief storm in the teacup over the impeachment has
definitely abated.
Differently put, newshounds and commentators find that there
is no calamity that is halfway real about which to beat their
breasts. Imagined disasters and fantasy doomsday scenarios can
take sensationalists only so far, as they cannot sustain any
real reportage with that kind of fiction.
They have no choice therefore, but to write about the
unfortunate but bright and beautiful law student who had the bad
fortune to have her hand amputated due to medical negligence, or
about the seemingly confused and accident prone 'snake girl.'
Or, the commentariat has to write about dengue, or the new
marriage registrar's fees that are incurred by the Veddah
community ...
Obviously, when the bad news is about -- broadly speaking --
marginal concerns of that sort, it is the surest sign that the
country is functional, it is brimming with hope, and that for
the first time in decades, things are beginning to happen in an
atmosphere of peace and security, in which there is room for a
contestation of ideas, but there isn't any room for disruptive
conflict and rebellion without a cause.
This is precisely what makes the Cassandras and those who
perceive themselves to be on the losing side of the war unhappy,
which is why they take the slightest societal disturbance and
try to make a mountain out of each such molehill. Those who
perceive themselves as being on the losing side of the war, are
not the Tamil people of course.
Curiously, its not any part of the population that feels
aggrieved either, in Killinochchi or in Colombo, about the fact
that that the vermin horde called the LTTE was eliminated.
But its the marginal actors that thrived in the misery of
others that are most unhappy today that there is no news except
good news by and large, that makes journalists have to go behind
negative stories, and cling on to one when they find one --
because they feel that good news is not news!
That little back-burner stories are sometimes headline news
in today's national dailies and weeklies, is however, a good
thing because issues that should be resolved, such as the
relatively high price of vegetables, are getting the attention
they deserve. This is a sign that in a maturing society,
people's day-to-day concerns get the priority that is requisite.
The reality used to be quite different.
Legitimate concerns about kitchen and school-room issues used
to get subsumed in the past in the vast bog of negative war
reportage, and in the cacophony of static about the so called
governance issues. But, the people now seem to have reclaimed
the right to manage their own lives.
In this permeating atmosphere of hope and optimism, it will
be good to look around and convert the saboteurs and the
nattering nabobs, and make them realize that they too have a
great deal to contribute to the collective rebound of the
people. But, the fact is that the Paikiasothys and the
Weliamunas and Jehans are such consummate no-hopers.
Some people cannot be weaned away from the bad they do, and
the misery they regularly seek to perpetuate. These people are
wedded to the dark-side, and it is not as if they refuse to see
reason; it's just that they are impelled by the sinister urges
of sabotaging, retarding or outright destroying.
But, those who seek a good life for the people ought not to
quit trying. The more the saboteurs try to destroy the
progressive trend, the more nonchalantly positive the rest of us
should resolve to be .. |