MEDIA AND ETHICS AND HOW SAJIN VAAS SAID IT

Predictably, there has been a hysterical if not violent reaction by certain media pundits and other more regular pundits to the proposed media ethics legislation. Whether there will be such new legislation or not, would be decided after extensive debate and discussion in Parliament.

But, that has not stopped the reactionary politically motivated reflex response. And what are some of the objections?

They say that there was no public outcry for such legislation, and that Parliamentarians are not ethically minded -- which makes a regime of ethics imposed from outside the media industry odious.

For an industry that worshipped the British regulatory system (the British Press Complaints Commission) to now claim that there is no need for a regime of media ethics imposed perhaps by a non-industry regulatory authority sounds rather rich, considering that the British regulatory system that our top potentates in the local media hierarchy lit sticks of incense to, is broken and in tatters.

Any remaining doubt about that would have been put paid to by the Levenson inquiry, at which the outrageous conduct of the British media was bared open for all to see - after what was commonly known as the phone hacking scandal.

When the British -- parent -- system is so broken and local media ethics has been a subject of concern and heartache for scores -- hundreds -- who had their reputations sullied by an unchecked media, what's the glib industry and punditry response to some kind of ethical regulatory regime for the media, that's mediated by an outside body?

It is to say such legislation was something that there was no civic outcry for, when it's common knowledge that there have been local editors who regularly used blackmail as a tactic to extort money from various persons who they were in a position to 'put in difficulty.'

Member of Parliament Sajin Vaas Gunawardene named names and named instances in Parliament of such extortion resorted to by a rather notorious person that figured in the recent past in the local media scene.

How much more disingenuous can the industry punditry and the regular punditry get on this subject? They say there is no ethics issue, when there are unregulated websites that indulge in nothing but slander, as there is no way of tracing any ownership responsibility for these sites. Free media chicanery is old hat now.

Not that there isn't anybody in the local media that does not know of blackmail, and false flag incidents to embarrass the regime --- all that has been established so much beyond doubt. When Arundika Fernando MP said that Pradeep Ekneligoda was moving around in France in disguise, he was not saying anything that was not known in the media industry grapevine.

A few people - such as the editor of this newspaper -- have been willing to go on record in local media programmes, however, to ascertain the claim that Pradeep Ekneligoda who once disappeared and re-appeared, is very probably moonlighting in a European country this time too.

Sajin Vaas Gunawardene MP said things about the media in Parliament that everybody knows about, but never quite say out loud. We say good for him, and good for us in society as a result.

He uttered the home truth that all the media moguls are in Parliament! Are they anything but partisan under the circumstances? He mentioned the names, including that of a government MP who he said despite being in government attacks the government unfairly a lot of the time. He wasn't uttering an untruth in any way. The pressures that particular character has brought to bear on his editors to be unfair by regime and other comers, are only too well known to some of us practitioners in the trade.

Yet, they ask for the charade to go on. The media should be free to bark up everybody's tree, defame, malign and sensationalize all in the name of media freedom. Wild asses were never freer than some of the local media yokels, who give a bad name to the sacrosanct tenet of media freedom. If they decry a regulatory system mediated by outsiders, remember, they brought it upon themselves.