Conflicting Perceptions in War Reporting by Sinhala and Tamil Media

March 3rd, 2008

by MSM Ayub

“The Sri Lanka fighter jets have destroyed a place in Jayapuram in Killinochchi where some senior LTTE leaders had assembled”. “Reports from Killinochchi say that seven civilians have been seriously injured in an attack by the SLAF bombers”. These are two lead sentences of two news items appearing in two newspapers on January 18. But do not misunderstand, these were not two incidents. These news items referred to one and the same incident.

[A Newsstand in Minuwangoda, Sri Lanka, (file Picture) by Dennis S. Hurd, New Westminster, BC, Canada]

One news item appeared in a Sinhala language newspaper and the other in a Tamil paper. With the experience no Sri Lankan will mistake the first news item as one appeared in a Tamil newspaper and also the second to be in a Sinhala paper.

According to the Sinhala newspaper the Air force pilots have been sharpshooters, and they have precisely attacked the LTTE hideout from some thousands feet above the ground. Contrary to that the Tamil paper blames the Air Force for wittingly or unwittingly bombing civilians. Sinhala paper did not see any civilian casualty while in the Tamil paper’s eye it is a bombing raid on civilians and not on LTTE cadres We can not contest both these claims for we were not eyewitnesses of the incident. However, either one or the both claims should be untrue.

Sometimes both could be true- SLAF may have destroyed an LTTE hideout and also civilians may have been hurt- but neither news items provide the complete picture.The incident was seen from two angles not only by these two particular newspapers.

Almost all Sinhala and Tamil newspapers had followed the same lines respectively-Sinhala papers claimed it was a raid on LTTE leaders and for the Tamil papers it was an attack on civilians.

This is how two other Sinhala newspapers reported the incident;”Fighter jets have attacked yesterday a camp in Jayapuram in KIllinochchi where a group of senior LTTE leaders have assembled”. “A fortified position of the LTTE leaders in Killinochchi has been attacked by air”

And the Sudar Oli which is more lenient to the LTTE said that “the SLAF MiG air crafts have “dumped” bombs on Jeyapuram in Killinochchi injuring seven civilians including a mother and a daughter and damaging up to twenty houses.” It also added that the Tigers had claimed that they had chased out the aircraft by firing anti-aircraft guns.

Severe bombing by the SLAF left seven persons injured and nine houses damaged in Kanakapuram in Killinochchi, The thinakkural reported. The bombardment was carried out on the populated area around Kanakapuram Maha Vidyalayam and nine houses have been flattened by the eight bombs dropped. Students who were in the school at the time of the bombardment have screamingly run helter-skelter, the paper added. (Although there is a name change of a place the news item referred to the same incident)

What we have made here is not an unprecedented observation. And also this was not the first time newspapers reported incidents related to the war and the ethnic problem in such a divided manner, and it will not be the last time that we are going to see such divided reporting giving totally diverse pictures. This may have been happening from the first conflict related incident.

On the same day the Kilinochchi bombing occurred it was reported that there was a clash between the security forces and suspected Tamil rebels (LTTE) in the jungles in Buttala area. It is also interesting to note how the news on the incident appeared in Sinhala and Tamil Language papers. “Troops attack the Tigers who escaped to Dambeyaya after blasting a bus at Buttala” said one Sinhala paper.

Another said “troops comb Buttala jungles in search of escaped Tigers” The tone of the Tamil papers was different. Weerakesari said “troops- Tigers clash in Dambeyaya jungles. “Those who searched Monaragala jungles shot at. One STF personnel injured” said Sudar Oli. In this case Tigers are on the run according to Sinhala papers, and in the eyes of Sudar Oli it was the troops who have got the beating.

When six soldiers were killed in Thalladi St. Sebastian Church in Mannar by the LTTE artillery fire on February 12 Sinhala papers reported it as an attack on the church. “Thalladi church damaged by the LTTE attack-6 soldiers killed” one paper said while another’s headline was Thalladi Catholic church destroyed by Tiger artillery attack”.

Another paper said that “Tigers attack the church while preparations for the feast was on”. All three Tamil papers published by the Colombo based private companies ran this story as their page one lead on February 13, but with a different angle. They said that the LTTE attacked the Thalladi army camp and not the church. They also quoted the Defence Ministry at a place down in the news item, as saying that the LTTE has attacked the church.

Some of the Sinhala papers that carried the Defence Ministry version said that the troops were attacked while they were repairing the church, while Sudar Oli in a separate story quoted a prominent Catholic clergy in the area as saying that the church in question is presently abandoned and soldiers have occupied the church premises.

Surprisingly sometimes we can read seemingly contrasting quotes of one and the same source. This is in fact interesting for a student of journalism but unimaginable for an ordinary reader who does not know the length and width of the inner circle of the media industry.

If we are to take an instance from a little distant place in the recent history, one of the pertinent occasions to find confounding quotes of the same person was the visit by Christina B. Rocca, United States Assistant Secretary for South Asia to Sri Lanka on April 19, 2005.

At the end of her visit she met the media in Colombo where she said that “a political solution is the only way to a resolution. We urge the parties to return to peace talks, and to continue the broader process necessary to end the conflict. The government should speak with one voice on the peace process.”

She further said that “Our position on the LTTE has not changed. The U.S. continues to regard the LTTE as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Our listing of it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization will remain in effect until the group renounces terrorism in word and deed. This includes ending the murder of political opponents and the recruitment of children. The LTTE should understand that we would be willing to consider engaging with them once they undertake such a renunciation”.

On April 20 almost all Sinhala papers carried page one news items on this press conference and highlighted what she said about the LTTE proscription in the US. “No lifting of ban on the LTTE until the outfit renounces violence in word and deed- Rocca says” or similar ideas were the headlines of most papers.

Tamil papers subdued this part of her speech and played up what Rocca said about the need of the Government to speak with one voice on the peace process.Those who had read papers in both languages might have been surprised at the first sight as to why this lady was airing so confusing views to papers in two languages spoken by two communities with conflicting interests.

But when you go on reading down the story you would find that journalists from both language streams had covered the same press briefing. Even if we dig farther and farther into the history we will be able to find more and more such fascinating comparisons of Tamil and Sinhala media covering same events.

Sometimes the news items in these two language streams are not only confounding each other but also they are as contrastive as black and white. During the first days of Vinaygamoorthi Muralidharan alias Karuna, the special commander of the LTTE for Ampara and Batticaloa districts splintered from the outfit in March 2004 skirmishes erupted between the two factions on daily basis.

A Sinhala paper once reported that more than hundred LTTEers had been killed by Karuna loyalists. Understandably other Sinhala papers too carried the same news with varying casualty figures on LTTE’s side whereas Tamil papers quoting former LTTE political wing leader Suppaiah Paramu Thamilchelvan said there is no fighting at all in the area referred to by the Sinhala papers.

Here Sinhala papers had attributed their news item to sources in the security forces in sharp contrast to the Tamil papers. The difference between hundred and zero in two language streams here is not mere numbers, but human lives.

A senior Indian journalist, Praveen Swamy of The Hindu/ Frontline who visited recently to the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI) for a mid carrier workshop for the Sri Lankan journalists working in all three languages had an open lecture on ethnic biased reporting in India as a side event at the same venue.

Surprisingly for most of the participants he related the behavioral pattern of the Indian media in respect of various ethnic clashes in India which were very akin to Sri Lankan media demeanour.

And also it was a well known fact that how the western media built a hype on the Saddam Hussein’s ‘Super Gun’ before the first US invasion on Iraq in 1991 and on the ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (WMD) in preparation to the second invasion in 2003, which were later proved to be an arrant lie created by the western leaders and repeatedly spread by the western media.

Had one collate the western media and the Arab media during those days he would have visualized the picture of the present day Sri Lankan media.Therefore the media’s ethnic bias is not a local but a global phenomenon.

Read Indian and Pakistani papers on Kashmir or some other common issue, you would find an interesting collation. There are so many reasons for this sharply divisive media behaviour. Main among them is the market oriented approach of the media industry which is common around the world and inevitable for its survival.

No media except for papers on which funds are pumped by NGOs, would dare to antagonize readers, and sometimes media take a more than biased attitude towards the audience and tend to appease it. The prejudice of the journalist who is a product of the current society adds flavor to this.

Another vital factor that influences the impartial reporting of ethnic issues is the contacts or the sources that the journalists maintain. Sinhalese journalists maintain contacts mainly with security personnel for war related information who feed the media with information favourable to them and main sources of Tamil journalists are Tamil politicians and LTTE related websites, both biased towards appeasing Tamil minds.

Thus the disparity between Sinhala and Tamil media becomes natural and the slant of one side is not challenged by the other side of the wedge as it is not conspicuous to that side due to the language barrier, thus the disparate reporting goes on unabated.

Entry Filed under: transCurrents Commentary