UNPACKING OPINION-MAKERS:

WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?

There is a major civil society fail that has hardly caught the attention of conscientious sectors of society – and useful busybodies.

None of the journalism schools in the country, or the media and communications departments, or the research officers in the non-governmental sector seems to have an inkling of the massive civil society fail in the area of responsible opinion making in this country.

90 per cent of the newspaper columnists and TV talking-heads, do not seem to see the need to substantiate their material with facts, statistics or background information.

When they do adduce facts, these people are unable to see context. Take the recent newspaper editorial ( … in a new fangled daily with a name that fairly shouts out: ‘Bring-on Yesterday’), which claimed that there have been serious human rights violations since the US sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka was passed last year at the 19th sessions of the UNHRC.

And what precisely are these serious violations?

Says the editorialist that among others there were two incidents -- the killing of two Tamil prisoners at a detention facility, and the Welikada prison riots, in which there were several deaths of prisoners.

Serious human rights violations – and two incidents immediately come to this editorialist’s mind. One of them is not a human rights violation at all! The other is a one-off case, being investigated.

Welikada prison riots

The Welikada prison riot was a result of prisoners engineering unrest in order either to escape, or to smuggle in forbidden items. Such riots are common in any country that incarcerates offenders.

Moreover the prisoners broke into the armoury, and came into possession of a dangerous quantity of weapons. The STF was deployed to contain a situation that was explosive as a result -- almost literally so, with the weapons acquired by force being a powder-keg that could cause an orgy of death and destruction behind bars, due to indiscriminate use of firearms.

Did the authorities have any alternative, but to deploy the Special Task Force? The STF went in, and the armed prisoners did not relent. They opened fire.

Were the STF personnel suppose to take the bullets, and perish? The fire was returned, and the resulting inevitable casualties could be put down to self-defence.

This is the ‘serious human rights violation’ that a local editorialist refers to in giving a snapshot of the ‘deteriorating human rights situation’ that is said to be in evidence since the resolution on Sri Lanka was tabled on the UNHRC floor last year.

All that the commentators are left with at the end of the day are sweeping statements, and gross generalizations. Such as the comparison of the recent Maharagama BBS (Bodu Bala Sena) march to Nazi rhetoric against the Jews, or the fascist marches that overtook Western Europe in the period that preceded World War II. That price piece of Cecile. B. de Mille hyperbole was from the onetime presidential media factotum, Harim Peiris.

BBS being out on a limb is probable, but a comparison to European fascism and NAZISM that advocated the extermination of an entire race, a genocide, that ended in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and then the Holocaust …?

This level of stupidity and cupidity is the norm in the commentary spaces of the national newspapers, and of course without a murmur, most people tend to accept the ranting of the regularly delusional, because it appears in black and white.

Corrupt practice

This newspaper has already editorially commented on Salma Yusuf’s recent assertion, that the newspapers underreported incidents of violence against Muslims! This was said at a seminar, and when challenged, she did not have a single incident to point to; the ‘underreported instances’ happened to be a mischievous figment of her imagination.

The piece of fiction could have planted her on a visible rung on the NGO ladder. Atta girl. But what price ambition, to lie your way to civil society celebrity-hood?

It must be mentioned that the Chair of the seminar at which Yusuf was given the opportunity was embarrassed by her falsehoods. But her seminar presentation eventually found its way to the newspapers! Must have been the five thousandth piece of fiction peddled by Sri Lankan opinion makers in recent times …

These liars need to be named and shamed. But that is not enough. Yes, Harim Peiris, editorial writers who claim the prison riots were a human rights violation etc., the Yusufs – the whole fibbing, deceiving lot.

But naming and shaming is not enough. This practice of odious half baked fact-less pontificating has to be rooted out of our society, and it is already too late.

Self-regulation imported from Britain has notoriously failed to do the job. Facts are sacred they say, and comment is free -- even vicious comment, that is all hot air and peddled without the most rudimentary fact checking.

There should be a special branch of investigative journalism that roots out this kind of menace. Time was when the media investigated the con-jobs of confidence tricksters and big time smooth operators.

Its time somebody turned the tables and investigated the corrupt practice of the media, giving space to articles that make Grimm’s Fairy Tales look like an encyclopedia by comparison. Investigate this con(pen)manship. Who pays for, or at least commissions this rubbish? Who let the dogs out? Really, any cur can write this kind of faction, any yapping mongrel that howls at the passing moon …