 Return to LNP
This News Site:
Lanka Newspapers is the largest Sri Lanka News forum online. Thousands of Sri Lankans from around the world gather here daily to discuss current news events of Sri Lanka. Join Today!
|
|
|
Bribes for scribes?
Monday, 3 July 2006 - 11:44 AM SL Time
|
|
|
On the heels of the news of a parliamentary decision to increase MPs` salaries; the Provincial Council of the poverty stricken North Central Province purchasing luxury vehicles for the chief minister and ministers, and all the provincial councillors, save Ratu Sahodarayas demanding pay hikes and cars, comes a proposal to shower duty free goods on the media personnel. New Governor of the Central Bank Ajith Nivard Cabraal has said, according to an AFP dispatch, the government will implement the proposed scheme to offer tax free cars, motorcycles among other things to journalists before the end of the year. The government`s objective, Mr. Cabraal has said, is to ensure the freedom of the media. `The freedom of media could be truly established only if the living conditions of the media personnel are raised,` he has said. True, the living conditions of journalists need to be raised and the freedom of the media guaranteed. But how can that twofold objective be achieved through the provision of duty free vehicles' Cars and motorcycles may help ensure journalists` mobility but not their freedom of expression! On the contrary, such concessions may go the wrong way and lead to the erosion of whatever freedom they already have as they might be beholden to the government for the ministrations in question.
A sine qua non of raising their living standards is to develop the industry that enables them to bring home the bacon. Take the print media for example. About one half of the population, languishing in poverty, cannot afford their basic needs let alone newspapers. Nearly one quarter of Sri Lankans are below the official poverty line (which was Rs.1,936 for April). With the money they spend on a newspaper they can buy a loaf of bread or a couple of eggs. When the national economy doesn`t do well and/or taxes are increased, industries all round suffer a blow and their advertising budgets become the first casualty. The media gets hit as a result. If there is a robust economy with benefits accruing to all sections of society thus bolstering their purchasing power, the media industry will expand and journalists stand to gain. Therefore, what is required is a holistic approach to the problem rather than piecemeal remedies. This, we believe, will be food for thought for the New Governor of the Central Bank and economic adviser to the media savvy President! In the short run, the government may consider tax relief to the industry in difficulty, as a whole, rather than goodies to individual journalists.
The proposal to offer scholarships to journalists to pursue higher education and professional training, looks a step in the right direction, provided the right candidates are chosen for the right programmes for the right reason without petty politics'of both governments and media barons'being allowed to creep in. The provision of such opportunities, which are consistent with the policy of free education, will go a long way in raising journalism from the trade that it is at present to a fully-fledged profession.
The question of governments granting car/motorcycle permits to journalists, inter alia, leads to a serious moral as well as ethical issue. Wasn`t it Minister Mangala Samaraweera who once said some journalists could be bought for a bottle of arrack' Won`t it be said that they could be bought for a duty free motorcycle or a car, which could be construed as bribes for scribes' Those concessions, the government says, will be granted to the `accredited journalists.` And this brings to the fore the question: Who is a journalist'
In this country, `journalists` are being churned out the way soldiers were recruited during the World War II period, when trucks would stop by the roadside and anyone could jump in and go soldiering! Worst of all, the `journalists` recruited haphazardly could get catapulted to the topmost posts in media institutions overnight. We are also not short of `accredited` journalistic centipedes with their feet in organisations with dubious backgrounds, who try to rise above the law of the land by waving their media cards.
Most of all, whenever parliamentarians get duty free vehicles, perks etc. at the expense of the public, the media fraternity lets out howls of protests, which caused Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle to lash out at the press the other day in Parliament. Now the respectable members of the Fourth Estate must ask themselves whether they have a right to duty free vehicles from a state which can`t afford enough buses to improve public transport. Unless they are a bunch of hypocrites, it won`t be difficult for them to tell the government, `No, thanks!`
|
|
|
|
