http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=20110618_09

apology on Faked Footage and Channel 4's 'Killing Fields'
(By: Gamini Premadasa)
"The BBC will make an on-screen apology to fashion chain Primark after a report found it was 'more likely than not' that it included faked footage", so says a Daily Mail Reporter on June 16.
BBC was the gold standard in journalism. There was a time when anything that BBC said was taken as the Gospel truth, whether it was the content that it gave its listeners and readers or the style and the erudite manner in which it was stated. The world has changed a great deal, and it is sad that BBC, as symbolic of the UK as the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, British Museum, Oxford Street, Harrods of Knightsbridge or the Lord's Cricket Grounds, has to come down from its pedestal.
All anti-Sri Lankan groups and individuals - Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu (past and present), the LTTE remnants and its backers in the UK, Canada, US or Australia and Navi Pillay and other bigwigs of UN - are agog with excitement after the UK Channel 4 broadcast its Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, and are demanding that the political leadership of Sri Lanka and its armed forces are hauled before an international court of justice for war crimes. When the high priests of journalism are ready to accept faking, mere mortals such as Channel 4 going all out to sensationalise and attract viewers is hardly surprising.
Siri Hewavitharana, an expert on digital video systems and former head of Cisco's Global Broadcast and Digital Video Practice Division and presently the Executive Director of IPTV Systems in Sydney, Australia says that the Channel 4 video is a fake. His opinion evidently counts for nothing, presumably because he is of Sinhalese origin, whereas the opinions of the UN special rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary executions, who is not known as an expert in video technology saying "What is reflected in the extended video are crimes of the highest order" is concrete evidence of the atrocities purported to have been committed by Sri Lanka. A widely publicised image (http://www.sangam.org/2011/05/UN_Execution_Video.php?uid=4365) that accompanies the statement of the UN expert, but shows only the backs of two individuals - one of whom could be anyone from the President of the US to the poorest man in Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh or any country in Europe - is more than enough for the vociferous anti-Sri Lankan sections of the world to convict Sri Lanka.
There are only two options available for Sri Lanka and the much-maligned Sinhalese. One is to adopt the strategy used by the members of the Royal Family of the UK - simply ignore the reporters and get on with their lives. The other is to establish a robust mechanism to tell the open-minded what happened over the past three decades - not just over the few months of the last stages of the war. It is pointless to respond to the individual allegations - Sri Lanka had been convicted long before the trial began and no amount of inquiries, investigations, explanations or justifications initiated by Sri Lanka will change the tide in its favour.