The news is unnerving. One of my Tamil colleagues has tears in his eyes. He is worried about his fiance who's stuck in Jaffna. The situation, as we hear, is not so good. It has become a numbers game between the government controlled media and pro-terrorist news groups.
No one knows what the reality is. No one knows where the truth lies.
The beauty in Sri Lankan media is that there is a newspaper for everyone. In paradise, every single news item is warped, skewed, and sugar-coated to your liking. They report what you WANT to hear. You just have to know which paper to pick.
Once, there was a protest march about a year ago, and it was passing the Bambalapitiiya Junction heading towards the city. The police had to break-up the march in order to accommodate the intersecting traffic. One television station showed those broken-up bits of the march and reported the whole thing was a failure; while the another channel reported it as a grand success and they showed the continuous rally that ran into miles and miles.
That is news, paradise style.
Majority of the newspapers are filled with partial and biased news reports. Between the pro and anti government propaganda, no one knows where to look. Local newspapers are just a plethora of depressing stories of people died, killed, or committed suicide around the country. The papers are more like extended obituaries - from cover to cover.
I'm starving for a good newspaper. I want to read some cheerful news. I want a papre that celebrates life. Where there's some flesh, trash, sports, cars, goss, and some political news from Romania, for example. I just want to see a paper that makes me feel good, and positive, about life. I just want to escape from this news trash. I've had enough.
as they say truth is the first casualty of war .
ReplyDeleteby the way there is a newspaper for everyone every where not just here. see the recent lebanon coverage.
to know the the truth there is nothing to do but wait till the particular situation stabilizes ( as in muttur now). one should discount claims made by both sides and parroting of those by idiotic journalists local and foreign( as happened in last week when both claimed they control muttur ).
ppl who claim to report 'facts' from on going battles are in fact lying, bc as anyone who has been near one knows its impossible.
we if we want to know news of loved ones caught up in such situations better depend on our own sources.
I could not agree more. The best of the lot that are available are The Daily Mirror/Sunday Times and the Nation on Sundays.
ReplyDeleteIn times past we used to turn to the BBC but they are now no longer follow things as closely as they used to. I don't think they are biased but info tends to be late/slow.