Free talk in Lanka
In 2002, a year of considerable importance in the recent history of Sri Lanka, the government in Colombo matched progress on the peace front by setting out to improve regulations governing the country's media. Along with other measures, this included efforts to professionalise the press corps, promote women's advancement into media management positions and reduce legal restrictions on journalists' work.
Politics being what it is, however, by year's end the government had partially slipped into the established habit of using state media as a megaphone for its own views. Some journalists who are considered supporters of the main opposition People's Alliance (PA) received 'punishment transfers'. But while government media leaned toward Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's positions, private media proved to be lively and buoyantly contrarian. Numerous Sinhala tabloids – including Lakmina, Lanka, Lakjana, Dinakara and Nijabima – were founded to articulate the positions of the various Sinhala parties in opposition to Wickremesinghe's government.
Scheduled for public release on 3 May, Media Freedom in Sri Lanka: Some Critical Issues, a report by Sri Lanka's Free Media Movement and the human rights NGO INFORM, explores the condition of press freedom in the country today. The report provides an overview of the major issues of journalism in Sri Lanka since the signing of the government-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ceasefire agreement in February 2002.
One of the most important of these issues, and one that will have particular significance in a future dispensation of Colombo-LTTE partnership, is the circulation of news and views evenly among all citizens of the country. In September 2002, after a 15-year hiatus, the Sri Lankan government restarted a Tamil language television channel which can reach viewers in the north and east. Correspondingly, the LTTE has looked southward with a Sinhala language magazine, Dedunu (Rainbow), and opened up areas under its control to print media from the outside. Controversy, however, has not been totally avoided in media matters surrounding the ethnic conflict, as is demonstrated by the fallout from assistance provided to the LTTE in acquiring high-powered broadcasting and transmission equipment in December 2002.