groundviews » Sloppy Journalism?

Sloppy Journalism?

April 6, 2008 at 9:31 pm · Categories: Peace and Conflict | by sam

Reuters reports that Mr Fernandopulle was “the second minister to be killed since January”, citing Minister for nation building, D.M. Dassanayake, as the first.

I seem to recall the killing of the UNP’s T. Maheshwaran on January 1 2008, and the TNA’s K. Siwaneshan on March 6. I may be wrong, but it is my understanding that both these politicians were members of parliament.

However, whether Reuters got it right or wrong isn’t the issue. (Though if Reuters did get it wrong, then its local bureau chief needs to take his job a little bit more seriously)

The issue is that international media coverage on Sri Lanka is, generally, relatively poor. The Reuters story is already spreading through the wires and getting published in newspapers around the world.

My point here isn’t about Reuters forgetting to mention the killings of politicians who were in opposition parties. Rather, I am constantly surprised by the inability of the big media to explain the complexity of Sri Lanka’s condition in more detail.

This lack of detail leaves room for sensationalists from all sides – the Government, the civil society in Sri Lanka, international human rights organisations, the LTTE, etc from having their perspectives accepted without interrogation or critique.

I guess there is no need to be too surprised at the lack of depth. Its the media operating in its classic form – reporting violence (or trivia) and simplifying and sensationalising stories is good for business. Detail gets messy, and according to the ratings gurus, people turn off.

Ultimately, Sri Lanka’s conflict is a dirty war, though there’s no such thing as a clean war. The LTTE are killing off politicians. The Government is killing off the LTTE. Innocent people are caught in the middle.

I’d like the media tell me what the fight is all about. Is it about the Tigers wanting a separate homeland, and the Government wanting to maintain a unitary state? What do the people want? Today, I spoke to someone who said they were saddened by the deaths of the innocent people, but more than pleased that another politician was taken out. Why are people responding like that? What does the public thing about its political leaders? What are their thoughts on the LTTE’s claims? And do they believe the NGOs that constantly seem to attack the Government’s human rights records?

It’d be wonderful if the international media services like Reuters get down and dirty in Sri Lanka. That would be a starting point for those living outside of this country (and for those living inside also) to understand this country in terms greater than suicide attacks and terrorism. I guess there’s the cricket that gets reported – but surely…

But of course, Reuters could never report anything in a deep or controversial way. They are simply here in Sri Lanka, like AP and the BBC to convey the big stories in a soft way, or the soft stories in a big way, for consumption by other media outlets that subscribe to their services.

Ultimately, all that media is just stuff to fill the space between the advertisements. And all this media (ie. what you are reading) is just commentary that has taken up my time and yours.

I am going for a walk.

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Karen Snyder said,

April 6, 2008 @ 11:08 pm

Wow, that is misleading reporting by a popular newswire agency!!!

Two murdered Tamil MPs are not counted!!!

sittingnut said,

April 6, 2008 @ 11:33 pm

my comment got posted by mistake before it was complete, i wanted to edit it but i cannot login for some reason
anyway here is rest of the comment
-
ppl should put away the notion that foreign agencies are there to cater to sri lankans or anyone who is seriously interested in sri lanka,. they are there to cater to specific demographic groups in westerns countries who have only superficial interest in sri lanka hence the superficiality of their news reports.

if you want to find what happens here( or anywhere for that matter ) you have to examine each report in detail. ask questions like what are the sources are they substantiated ? what can motivate the cited sources? what motivated the reporters to report without sources ? was all sides given equitable space to put their case? if not why?what kind of words are used and what does they say about the reporters bias ? what does other reports on the same news say ? why the difference if any ? and what does history of this particular reporter’s reports indicate? answers to these questions can be found by anyone who has the will to search .

for those who do not bother they get the news they deserve ; rumors and propaganda ( even through ppl who call themselves journalists and work for supposedly reputed media groups )

Salami said,

April 6, 2008 @ 11:37 pm

It says 2nd minister.. I dont see what’s wrong with that. Maheshwaran or Siwaneshan were not ministers… So Reuters got it absolutely right.. Jeraj was the 2nd minister to be killed.. He’s also the 4th Parliamentarian to be killed..

Are you suggesting that Maheshawaran and Siwaneshan were ministers too?

I may sound stupid stating the obvious… but There’s a real difference between a minister and a parliamentarian.

Arnt you just mad that there’s coverage for a pro-govt. MP who got killed by the LTTE?

sittingnut said,

April 6, 2008 @ 11:37 pm

it seems my first comment got lost for good.
*well here is the first part. above comment is merely the second part and should be read after this comment*
-

errr… ministers and mps are two different things. but then again details like that are not valid by the standards of this blog i suppose.

anyway i agree that reuters and other agencies( reuters in particular) coverage is sloppy (and biased towards terrorists. may be you may not agree to that ) when it comes sri lanka coverage. i have written about that in detail (with evidence) before elsewhere.

journalists should have only two valid motives .
1. be objective
2. cater to their market ( such a commercial motive is not a “bad” thing btw as some socialists think )

foreign news agencies have generally failed on the first score. but going “down and dirty”, whatever that means, is not the answer ( esp if that means expressing subjective opinions and taking sides ), adhering to objective journalistic standards will be. for instance they should check for substantiated facts before reporting and and not indulge repeatedly is such racist mistakes as equating ltte terrorists with tamils.

that agencies are neglectful of sri lanka and post third rate reporters here is due to to the second motive. it is the same motive that led international media to almost completely neglect the plight of sri lankan migrants in lebanon ( largest group by far of expatriates in that country ) when israel invaded in 2006 while giving acres of news coverage to scores ( as opposed to thousands) of western expatriates there. and that is reality.

groundviews said,

April 7, 2008 @ 12:28 am

Both Maheshwaran and Siwaneshan were Members of Parliament. Siwaneshan was the TNA MP for the Jaffna District. Maheshwaran as noted in the post was an MP of the UNP when he was killed.

sittingnut said,

April 7, 2008 @ 4:55 am

“groundviews” still doesn’t get it, it seems, members of parliament are not necessarily ministers even when we have 105+ ministers. there are 225mps so there are 115+ plain mps without a ministerial portfolios.

so in fact reuters got the main detail that the blog post cite as instance of “sloppy journalism” right here. that there is sloppy journalism is a fact but not here. here it is a case of sloppy blog poster undermining his own argument by making mistakes.

calm down and think clearly before writing

SRILANKAN said,

April 7, 2008 @ 7:12 am

[Edited out] What we need to do is eliminate all killings but one objective is to get there we need to distroy LTTE to the end. Thats the only way my friends.

indi said,

April 7, 2008 @ 8:09 am

i don`t see anything wrong with the reuters article. it clearly says the word “minister”. those the tamil politicians are just MP`s. dude, sam, you better read the article carefully before criticizing it. better read it again when you get home after you walk.
[Edited out]

lankarising said,

April 7, 2008 @ 9:44 am

“second minister to be killed since January” – This news in Reuter is spot on right. What is big fuzz? MP’s and ministers are not the same

sam said,

April 7, 2008 @ 9:50 am

Ah, confusion over words!

Anyway, as I mentioned above, my point wasn’t about that – it was about the greater issue about the lack of detailed analysis about Sri Lanka.

Good to know you are keeping watch Indi.

sam said,

April 7, 2008 @ 9:59 am

Thanks for everyone else’s corrections too… My mistake, but I did place a question-mark after ’sloppy journalism’ !! Sam.

ellalen said,

April 7, 2008 @ 12:50 pm

Is´t that all goverment MP:s got the minister post? So they do only have ministers? Funny!

Castedeus said,

April 7, 2008 @ 3:41 pm

To add my two cents to the multitude of comments voicing the same, nothing wrong in principle: the two others mentioned were not ministers. I don’t think your quote reflects agendas as its an accurate report.

On the wider issues, yes for sure, it would be great to delve in more depth… with you on that…… but then again, this is hard news… perhaps a feature could explore more.

Perumal said,

April 7, 2008 @ 6:54 pm

The war is not yet understood by most commentators here. The government kills the LTTE combatants and LTTE leaders. This is the objective of their war. The counter objective of LTTE is to kill government ministers or the leadership and the soldiers.

The Reuters report tries to bring out that in this war, the leadership of the government is getting killed. Two of them since January. The implication is that the government is losing the war.

sam said,

April 7, 2008 @ 7:17 pm

I am going to add another 5 cents…

Last night when I wrote that post, I was probably responding to the fact that Reuters had not told the full picture. I will honestly say that I got muddled with the fact that the ‘M’ is MPs could have stood for ‘members’ or ‘ministers’. The article was focusing on Ministers and not Members. My apologies for being careless.

However, I think the comments my problematic post attracted raises some interesting questions. Most of the comments were quite reactionary. It would have been interesting to explore such issues as why MPs (ie. members of parliament) are not considered leaders. Also, it would have been interesting to ask if Reuters has a responsibility to mention that there were two Members of Parliament who met with similar fates…

And the story could have had bigger impact: Four Parliamentarians Killed in Four Months! But of course, I now know that Reuters aren’t in to sensationalising stories. So, apologies to them for even considering they may have been.

Someone mentioned ‘hard news’. I really don’t know what hard news is. Is it news that makes the journalist hard, or the audience hard? I hope I don’t get accused of using gendered language! Maybe its news that’s hard to get. But I seriously don’t know what hard news is. Of course, wikipedia will probably define it – but I still don’t know what it means. Perhaps it just means big news. Or edgy news. Or news that’s going to have a hard impact on the audience as well as the journalist.

Raj said,

April 8, 2008 @ 5:46 am

Sam,

Its easy to confuse who is and isn’t an MP in Sri Lankan politics since practically every member of the ruling coalition government is a minister of something.

Its a payoff of sorts and will be a part of SL politics as long as there are Singhalese politicians.

In fairness, I would suspect the salary cost of maintaining the bloated cabinet is infinitesimally small compared to allocated money squandered through their ministries.

Turning to the main topic of discussion, it is a HUGE stretch to call the coverage of the ethnic conflict in SL by most international news agencies, journalism.

What they are are reporters. Here I am talking about people like Peter Apps, Krishna Francis, Ravi Neesman, Amal Jayasinghe, Paul Tighe, PK Balachandran, N Ram et al.

Their reporting consists primarily of logging on the MOD website and then regurgitating what the Singhalese government has to say. If there is time before filing the report , they might place a call to Irashiah Illanthayrian for comment to appear balanced.

As we all know, a significant percentage of the articles are simply cut and paste.

IMO, the majority of Sri Lankans do not want to hear the truth. It would tear their lives apart and bring into question their entire belief system and culture.