More garbage flowing down a sewer called Canal 4

Years ago, when I was an undergraduate, there was among us a highly talented boy.  He was extremely intelligent and although he hardly ever studied or visited the library always produced excellent results at examinations.  He was also a musician and one of the most accomplished I’ve heard on the Israj.  He was an actor and a sportsman too, his pet discipline being wrestling.  He was literally all over the university, engaging in numerous activities even though he spent his mornings teaching, having got an appointment on account of his qualifications in the field of music.

This boy, who always spoke sense, would on occasion come out with a monumental gaffe.  The running joke about him was that when he did slip, he slipped really badly, not least of all because he would add gaffe to gaffe in the process of trying to rectify things.  Channel 4 reminded me of him a few days ago. 

A few weeks ago, Channel 4 came up with a film on Sri Lanka, replete with a cast of shady characters all portrayed without mentioning their involvement in terrorist activities.  It always happens.  Hatred and ego are the parents of error.  It was a full-of-holes production and the holes have been pointed out and indeed, a full review would I believe show that the holes are larger than they actually seem. 

It looks like Channel 4 (henceforth Canal 4, conveyor of foul-matter in the manner of a sewer) has decided that the best way to plug a hole is to stuff it with garbage.  The piece of journalistic incompetence and investigative sloth forever marked by abysmal math skills and lack of integrity called ‘Killing Fields’ has been followed by an ‘interview’ of a couple of soldiers (or so Canal 4 claims) who claim to have been witness to what happened in the last days of the monumental hostage rescue operation carried by the Sri Lankan security forces. 

Canal 4 (maybe I should call it ‘Sewer 4’?) showcases a witness called Fernando.  Claims are made but are not backed by a shred of evidence. The only claim that can be corroborated is that of there being dead bodies.  It is strange that Sewer 4 has not thought of interviewing the hundreds of thousands of civilians who were rescued from the clutches of terrorists and who are now free to travel all over Sri Lanka and all over the world.  They, if any, could help make Fernando’s claims more believable.

Interestingly, none of the testimonies in the public arena mention any atrocities of the nature that Fernando claims took place.  It is strange too that it took Sewer 4 more than 14 months to find the much-trumpeted ‘First Eyewitness’. It is almost as if the only people around were the soldiers, that only ghosts came out of the un-cleared areas and that the soldiers had perpetrated these alleged atrocities on phantoms.  Someone must be hallucinating or intent on turning hallucination into fact. Garbage is the word that comes to mind right now, in this generous mood I am in. 

Another ‘witness’ claims he was privy to a conversation between the Defence Secretary and a field commander.  Sewer 4 tries to frill the story by bringing in a statement made by a former President of Sri Lanka endorsing the fact that her naïve son had been reduced to tears by the previous Sewer 4 film.  While all this raises a lot of questions regarding who is doing what in Sewer 4 productions.  Chandrika Kumaratunga, for the record, was tongue-tied during the last stages of the operation and had to swallow her malice down with the greatest difficulty in order to mutter a few words of congratulation).

In the end it’s all hearsay.  Channel 4 told a good story in ‘Killing Fields’.  These latest efforts are toilet wash.  Stuff for the sewer. 

As for accountability, Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans do not need a gutter television outfit or a highly discredited ex-president to lecture on the subject.  There is a process. There is keen interest in the process.    What this gutter station is doing will harm this process simply because the claims are so preposterous, mal-intentioned and busybody-like that the citizens of Sri Lanka could at some point turn around and say,  ‘enough is enough; the war is done, terrorism is out, life is in, all bets off, we start from scratch!’ 

That would indeed be a pity, all things considered, but that’s where these efforts that ought to go into a text book on how not to be a journalist are taking us. 

So yes, Channel 4 has a reputation, a name, but when one stands on brand name and pees, you don’t call it a shower from the heavens.  Pee is pee.  Even when employed to wash away poo-poo evicted with a lot of heave and puff earlier. 

[Courtesy 'The Nation', July 31, 2011]

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And some tears cannot go uncommented…

A few years ago, when I was associated with the National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT), I helped put together a booklet about media representation of the conflict.  The title was ‘Some tears are not newsworthy’.  It spoke to inequality and privileging apparent in how the unfolding events were being portrayed in certain sections of the media, both local and foreign. 

The book focused on the shameless downplaying and even non-mention of atrocities perpetrated by the LTTE.  It was wryly observed that people generally misname terrorist as rebel if the theatre of operation is in any country other than one’s own.  The complicity of certain sections of the foreign media in the terrorist project was apparent even back then, i.e. long before Channel 4 became the post-war Voice of Tigers, so to speak. 

It was all about who was crying and over what.  Reading former President, Chandrika Kumaratunga’s recounting of a phone conversation with her son Vimukthi, brought it all back to me.  Vimukthi is reported to have wept after watching the Channel 4 production about the last days of the mission to rid the country of terrorism and to rescue an unprecedented number (close to 300,000) of people held hostage by the world’s most ruthless terrorist organization, the LTTE.  He has apparently said that he is ashamed to be a Sinhalese.  His tears and words were newsworthy because he’s an ex-President’s son and of course because these things can be used to frill the tall stories that the LTTE rump led by that terrorist in a cassock, S.J. Emmanuel is getting the likes of Channel 4 to tell the world. 

I felt sorry for Vimukthi.  Honestly.  And I felt sorry for his mother too.

As I said, ‘Killing Fields – Sri Lanka’ was a production.  A good one too.  There is clever juxtaposition of image, footage, commentary and music.  There is careful editing out of available footage.  For example, the fact that one of the ‘stars’ of the show, Issipriya, is portrayed as a heart-and-soul journalist cum musician, even though Channel 4 has previously aired footage where this ‘lady’ is described as one who glorifies suicide bombers and therefore clearly a recruiter of terrorists.  Channel 4 spouts numbers but is crafty enough to keep context out, making sure that the viewer is left without enough information to work out the relevant math.  There is use of clearly tainted witnesses who have been caught lying before and have several axes to grind.  There’s scandalous glossing over of the LTTE’s considerable curriculum vitae, not just in ethnic cleansing and other crimes against humanity but mock-up videos, use of military fatigues robbed from captured and killed members of the Sri Lankan security forces and other productions designed for the gullible and of course the complicit. 

Every story is a lie and a good liar can tell a good story. Channel 4 is an excellent story teller and I wouldn’t blame the average viewer for believing that Channel 4 had a true story to tell.  Vimukthi, though is not your average ill-informed viewer, absorbing image and claim about a foreign context he has no clue about.  And his mother, as an ex-President ought to know better than to play sucker to mal-intention. 

For all this, I believe Vimukthi’s tears are honest.  The boy is ignorant and probably good-hearted.  Forgivable.  Kumaratunga is no innocent abroad, though.  She’s smart enough to know about media spin.  She’s supposed to have a degree in the social sciences and even though it must be several decades since she last visited a university library or listened to a lecture on research methodologies, it is hard to believe that she knows zilch about things like reliability and verification.  She’s done enough spin in her day to give Muttiah Muralitharan a run for his money.  And she’s been either orchestrator of or happy witness to mass scale electoral fraud during her tenure to know that 1 plus 1 adds up to 2 and not 11, as Channel 4 might want us to believe. 

When I think of Kumaratunga, I remember the opening song of the musical Evita where Ernesto Che Guevara, mocking the pomp, pageantry and outpouring of grief at Eva Peron’s funeral claims, ‘She did nothing for years!’  That’s only part-memory of the ex-president, though. She did a lot too and much of it unforgettable in a forgettable kind of way if you know what I mean.  And I am not only talking about the Wayamba Provincial Council Election.  It was during her tenure after all that Eelam-speak was heard loudest. Indeed among her nearest and dearest were unapologetic champions of separatism.  Her commitment to peace was amply demonstrated by the amazing twinning of the occasionally visible military offensive and the round-the-clock vilification of the military and vociferous chorusing of the line ‘the LTTE cannot be militarily defeated’.  She invited Norway to broker an agreement with a terrorist who had vowed to divide the country.  Should I say more?

Vimukthi is a Sinhalese. So too his mother.  By name and mother tongue.  Did the Sinhalese, as a community, ever sanction atrocity?  By the same token, has either mother or son ever claimed to be proud to be a Sinhalese for some random act by some Sinhalese (verifiable and without a shadow of doubt hanging over it) such as sending food and medicine to the tsunami affected brethren among the Tamils or volunteering to help those who had been rescued by the Army in the first few months of the year 2009?  Vimukthi-style embarrassment would make every single person on this earth ashamed of his/her community for all communities contain despicable people doing shameless things.  Indeed, he need not have waited for Channel 4 to air its LTTE-spin to be ashamed of his race.  His own mother could have driven him to tear and embarrassment more than a decade ago. 

Vimukthi and his mother are Sinhalese. By name.  They don’t make me embarrassed to be a Sinhalese.  They only evoke pity.  Infinite pity.  May they both be blessed by the Noble Triple Gem and someday be endowed with the wisdom to navigate the regions of avidya (ignorance or delusion). 

[This article appeared in the Daily News of July 30, 2011]

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