Reports
Media monitoring team
- Report on the media reportage of the visit of Lyn Pasco – Mihirani Premachandra
- Report on the media reportage of the violence in Menik Farm – Selvaraj Rajasegar
- Report of the media reportage of the Visit of Thamilnadu MPs – H.J. Sampath Rohana Kumara
- Trends in the Behaviour of Print Media over 2009 – Seetha Ranjini
- All the other reports were jointly compiled by H.J Sampath Rohana Kumara and Selvaraj Rajasegar.
Mihirani Premachandra supported by providing monitoring data.
Translation of article originally written in Sinhala. See Tamil translation here.
There is something that had to be cleared up when we talk of the difference between pre-war era and post war era humanitarian news reporting. Though we use the word pre-war here the topics we discuss are relevant to reporting when the war was going on. The reason is the war that was declared over by the army commanders to the President on the 17th May and the official announcement made by the President the next day, kept going for two years and 10 months. So it would be clearer for us to consider this two years and ten months period as the era where the war was going on and the era that began after the 20th of May as the post war period. We made this preface to clarify some differences that can be noticed from October last year up to May 19 2009 when we started the monitoring of humanitarian reporting and the period that came after that. Though some media showed a slight change in their attitudes while reporting humanitarian issues, the govt media kept on protesting against them even last week. This protest was done in two ways. One protest was based on statements made by some govt authorities on reports published by the international media with regard to humanitarian crises in Sri Lanka. The other protest was expressed by refusing to extend the visa of Ravi Nessman of the Associated Press and making him to leave Sri Lanka. The organizations appearing for media freedom protesting against this incident opines that the reason for this is reporting on humanitarian news. Read more…
A Powerpoint presentation to complement the media monitoring report from January to February 2009 available here.
Download the PPT here or as a PDF here.
Synopsis:
- Sinhala and English Media do not report disasters and deaths of people in Vanni due to military operations and shelling.
- Tamil Media on the contrary more rigorously cover these issues, quoting websites as sources of information. Though for around two weeks we monitored a drop in coverage of these issues, it is now back to what it once was.
- Print media that don’t generally publish news related to the humanitarian crisis in the Vanni for example nevertheless give a lot of coverage to official responses by the Government to communiqués, press releases and statements by local and international civil society actors on Sri Lanka.
- Even when news based on or quotes a government authority is found to be misleading or incorrect, a retraction and correction is rarely made. Those who discover and point out such factual inaccuracies and underlying bias are targeted for smear campaigns.
- Little or no consideration and coverage is given to framing and flagging problems faced by Tamil civilians caught up in the war as well as those people and institutions engaging in humanitarian assistance.
- In contrast to the Sinhala and English Media that primarily use government sources in reports on humanitarian issues affecting the Tamil people, Tamil media seems to have a more diverse selection and attribution of sources.
- Media across all languages gives equal coverage to issues of national importance as well as events and processes anchored to polity and society in the South. However, there is a clear polarization between Tamil media on the one hand, and English and Sinhala media on the other hand on the qualitative and quantitative reportage of problems affecting the Tamil peoples.
- A symbiotic relationship between traditional print and electronic media and the regime is evident.
Download the full paper here.
Download a Powerpoint presentation of the key findings here.
