UK Sunday Times criticises Channel 4 for its shoddy journalism
By Raj Gonsalkorale
AA Gill’s article in the UK Sunday Times has roundly crticised the Channel4 presentation stating Jon Snow’s commentary was intemperate and partisan, and it was all held together by assumptions.
Finally, amongst the mud and the mud rakers, there is someone with some sanity. This gives the Sri Lankans some hope, that redemption is still possible within the media establishment in UK. One can only hope that others who are still closeted will come out and demonstrate their journalistic ethics.
Jon Snow has done irreparable damage to the reconciliation efforts of Sri Lanka, and he along with all who have chosen to believe another “Iraq has WMDs” story, has deliberately and pointedly attacked Sri Lanka with uncorroborated, unsubstantiated and sickening material cobbled together as investigative journalism. It has demonstrated how one can sell one’s soul for a few pieces of silver, and burrow to murky depths even the lowliest of living beings would shudder to go.
Worse still are all those who have believed this rot, and who are hell bent on punishing Sri Lanka because of a piece of garbage. If sections of the Tamil Diaspora, the LTTE rump and their cohorts in Sri Lanka, the TNA, think that they have achieved a big victory with this puerile presentation, something they obviously have funded and helped to cobble together, they are mistaken.
Sadly though, their being mistaken is going to do more harm to the very people who they have been pretending to fight for, the innocent Tamils living in Sri Lanka.
For this very reason, it is not the Sinhala people who should get outraged, it should be the Tamils in Sri Lanka, as this despicable show could have unwanted and uncalled for repercussions, when they were slowly but surely raising their heads after 30 years of terror, war and destruction and settling into an integrated life with the rest of Sri Lankans.
The issue for them should be whether they believe what is actually happening around them, or whether they believe the vomit strewn by Jon Snow and Channel4. The war was nasty and they must know it was the LTTE that forced it.
They know that the Sri Lankan Army did not behave in the way they are depicted by Channel4. They should know who in fact behaved like that. Whatever investigations are done will not tell them more than what they already know, because they experienced the horror of war, not the investigators. They, and only they, know the truth.
They will not be deceived by such a despicable attempt to drive a wedge between them and their fellow Sri Lankans. They will not allow this to affect the many efforts being taken by the government to restore their lives and livelihoods.
AA Gills article is quoted below as it is important to read it in full.
Choosing to Die [Terry Prachett's BBC 2 documentary on euthanasia] was billed, hyperbolically, as the first time the moment of death has been shown on television. It isn't. Not by many, many deaths.
What they meant was the first death of a white western man in a sitting room; there is death all over television all the time. Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, Channel 4's documentary on that country's civil war, was made up of little else but the moment of death. Just before we get into it, I am going to pause, yet again, to have an eye-rollingly weary word about Jon Snow's comic ties and jocund socks. And to explain why I mind and why they matter.
The ugly garish ties are worn to semaphore the fact that this is a chap who is only wearing a suit because the headmaster says he must. Inside, he is really a far more relaxed, counterculture kind of dude, not at all the establishment flunky the two-piece single-breasted implies. It is a pathetically and worryingly childish pose in a man approaching retirement who wants what comes out of his mouth to be taken seriously. Back to the programme.
Channel 4 has been flogging this story for more than a year, ever since it was given an unattributed but disturbing clip of footage that appeared to show Tamil Tiger prisoners being executed. It has showed it so often, to righteously harangue the Sri Lankan ambassador and various spokesmen, that now nobody will talk to it.
The channel has accumulated a large collection of samizdat amateur footage from mobile phones and video cameras - mostly unattributed and uncorroborated. It mixes this footage with comment from unnamed sources with distorted voices and shadowed faces. And human rights lawyers. It was brutal, it was shocking, but it wasn't journalism.
Not a second of this has been shot by Channel 4; none of the eyewitness accounts comes from journalists.
Snow's commentary was intemperate and partisan, and it was all held together by assumptions. Channel 4 News has drifted from providing news broadcasts into being an outlet for nodding spokespeople and assorted NGOs and environmental pressure groups, or anyone who can provide interesting or sensational film. It follows the old American news adage, "If it bleeds, it leads".
What was depressing about this particularly bloody special was not just that it had precious little context or considered thought, but that the people who will suffer most from it are not governments or soldiers, but the victims of this brutal war, who deserve a more measured professionalism and due diligence, and who deserve better than this compilation of gore, topped and tailed by a man in a comedy tie.
Finally, the most demeaning and prurient part of it all was that the penises of the naked men being executed were smudged out, as if they were the shocking part.
And the pubic hair of abused and murdered women was coyly pixelated so as not to be titillating. The horror of war tidied up like Japanese porn, to save us the embarrassment and distaste of having to look at the genitals of the dead.
This was a piece of politically correct sanitising that was degrading and humiliating for the viewer and the viewed, but was symbolic of this programme's contorted news agenda. It really was the most astonishing and misjudged editorial decision from a news broadcaster that has grown into the habit of poor judgment on almost everything.
Channel 4 News once had clever and astute reporters; now it boasts a revolving handful of Autocue readers with hair issues. And its arts coverage, which was by far the best of any terrestrial news, is now ill-informed, naff and embarrassing. This documentary was a low point in a continuing slump.
What both Choosing to Die and the Sri Lankan documentary suffered from in different ways was empathy - which is very popular in documentaries these days. What both should have had was a buttoned-up sober detachment."
- Asian Tribune -
Comments
With Gen. Shavendra Silva
With Gen. Shavendra Silva tearing the documentary into pieces in New York and AA Gill proving in UK that there is no journalism in the film, I am wondering how the Foreign Secretary of UK is feeling now about being taken for a ride by the LTTE, a Trerrorist Organization banned in UK. He must now be looking for his pants to come back to the parliament.
The Use of Human Rights as a
The Use of Human Rights as a Weapon of War by the Trans-national LTTE Sympathisers
The cash rich trans-national LTTE sympathizers have used their money to cultivate the Human Rights NGOs, the media and the elected representatives wherever they have voting power, to create the perception that the final victory over LTTE was achieved at the cost of unprecedented Human Rights abuses. They are clamouring for War Crimes investigations led by the Western Nations.
President Rajapakse, Ministers such as G L Peiris and Mahinda Samarasinghe, MP Rajiva Wijesinghe and some highly capable diplomats have individually done a wonderful job of sniping at the assault on the Human Rights record of Sri Lanka.
We cannot win this war by only sniping at the enemy. This is the time for Sri Lanka to create a multi-skilled task force to meet this threat. We need to use the multi-pronged strategies used in vanquishing LTTE from Sri Lanka, to create the correct perceptions in the minds of the decision makers and the people of western nations. The task force needs to be led by a person capable of developing the strategies required to achieve this objective.
As this is a media war, we need people well known to the media such as Rajiva Wijesinghe and a capable public relations team to prepare the necessary ammunition. In addition, we need lawyers, some military officers who can speak with a first hand knowledge of the last phase of the war such as Ambassador Shavendra Silva Etc., who can participate in this world wide operation to change the negative perceptions. Any delay in developing such a coherent strategy can lead to unpleasant developments.
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