Editors' Guilty: Lasantha Wickramathunga forgotten at the annual journalism excellence awards ceremony in Sri Lanka.

  (July 16, 2009) The 10th annual awards ceremony to honor excellence in journalism jointly organized by Sri Lanka Editors' Guild and the Sri Lanka Press Institute was held on Tuesday (24) in Mount Lavinia Hotel with much grandeur but turned out to be a farce as the internationally recognized investigative journalist and slain founder editor of The Sunday Leader, Lasantha Wickrematunge was completely forgotten at the event.

A minute’s silence was observed in memory of all the journalists who died during the past year. Reliable sources said that the Editors' Guild was reluctant even to mention Lasantha Wickramathunga's name in the function.

Reportedly, the organizers of the event collected material from Leader Publications Pvt Ltd prior to the event with a promise of a small video presentation on the life and times of Wickrematunge, a pledge never accomplished. Reliable sources say that the Editors' Guild is in the view that the Sunday Leader is not a quality publication, and does not stand by standard journalism ethics. The organizers of the journalism awards ceremony did not accept nominations from the Sunday Leader and Morning Leader, last year and this year. However, Mohanlal Piyadasa the editor of Irudina, the Sinhala language sister paper of Sunday Leader, is an executive committee member of the Editors' Guild. Irudina depends highly on the translations of investigative reports of the Sunday Leader. Regarding ethics, no other Sri Lankan newspaper is better than the Sunday Leader, according to our point of view. If the Leader is notorious in war reporting, the other newspapers are notorious in many other criteria like gender, ethnic and religious biases etc.

Lasantha Wickrematunge was murdered in broad day light on a busy highway on January 08, 2009 as he was driving his vehicle to the newspaper office. Editors' Guild praised him in their obituaries although it took a different stand at the journalism excellence awards ceremony. It said that what the country was witnessing was an ongoing campaign against the dissemination of information to the citizenry and democratic dissent. “An adversarial relationship between any government and the media is good for governance and Lasantha epitomized this. It is also the inalienable right of the people to be kept informed and to decide on the choice of media,” the Editors’ Guild said then.

However, the N. Vidyathran, the Editor of Tamil publications, Uthayan and Sudar Oli and his staff were honored at the ceremony for reporting under special circumstances. A posthumous award was offered on MTV/MBC correspondent Rashmi Mohammed who was killed in a bomb attack on October 6, 2008 at Akuressa while covering a political meeting.

Sri Lankan Minister of Labor Mervyn Silva has meanwhile publicly claimed responsibility for ‘eliminating’ Lasantha Wickrematunga while the President Mahinda Rajapakse said to The Hindu Editor-in-chief N. Ram during an interview that Lasantha Wickramathunga was friend and the deceased had made his last call was made to the President. He said he was unable to reply it since he was in shrine room at the moment.

Demilitarize media to bring democracy to society

(July 03, 2009) On the day, the Working Sri Lanka Journalists' Association secretary Poddala Jayantha was abducted and assaulted, while having a discussion with the media organizations, the President Mahinda Rajapakse proposed the journalists to settle the conflicts among them, reported Ravaya editor-in-chief Victor Ivan.

He meant the conflict between the pro-war and anti-war journalists. Anti-war journalists are today branded as the Tiger associates by the victorious pro-war media.

This phenomenon is reflected once again with an incident reported by Sunanda Deshapriya in the Freedom of Expression Sri Lanka blog. The title of the post is 'Death threats to Ravaya journalist from Divaina editor.' (You can read it by clicking the headline.)

We do not think the Army Commander or any other authority is naive enough to take any journalists tale readily and to punish a person swiftly. The problem remains among the journalists themselves. Sri Lankan journalists have to cultivate the patience to tolerate diverse opinions. They who criticize others should be able to bear criticism on them as well. Pens should be dealt with pens and not by guns.

First step to bring democracy to Sri Lankan society is to demilitarize the media persons. One party in Sri Lanka has already been demilitarized with the defeat of the Tamil nationalist militant movement.According to Ravaya editor Victor Ivan, the defeated party is also similar to the victorious.