http://www.priu.gov.lk/news_update/Current_Affairs/ca201204/20120403channel4_sl.htmhttp://www.priu.gov.lk/news_update/Current_Affairs/ca201204/20120403channel4_sl.htm

Channel 4 and Sri Lanka: A Case
Study In Media Interventionism

The media beat-up has become a common event. A media beat-up involves the
Western mainstream media picking on a particular foreign country – often a small
one or a third world one but never a large member of the Western alliance – and
portraying its government in a bad light, says in a report by the Centre for the
Study of Interventionism. “This has most recently been focused on Russia
during its election campaign. The characteristics of this beat-up are often the
same: a complex situation or conflict is presented in stark black-and-white
terms, the government is the villain, and the head of state is singled out for
particular vilification,” the report adds. Referring to the Channel 4
documentaries on Sri Lanka the report stated that although it not one of the
most famous cases, the attacks by British media on Sri Lanka are a case in
point.Two Channel 4 documentaries attacking Sri Lanka’s “killing fields”
have brought campaigning journalism to a new level because the message
communicated is so specifically interventionist, the report further stated.
We live in an age which boasts of being awash with information. In fact,
permanent foreign correspondents have been massively cut back in the last
decades. The field is therefore clear for journalists to travel to, or report
on, situations in countries about which, in fact, we know very little and to
draw on the blank page of people’s ignorance fantastic stories which, in fact,
are based either on little evidence or on sheer bias, the report
added.Here is the full text of the report:Ever since
Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn used the Spanish civil war to boost their
own celebrity status, the war correspondent has been – in Philip Knightley’s
memorable words – both hero and myth-maker. There are numerous examples of
reporters not only becoming adrenalin junkies but also profiling themselves as
moral arbiters in order to sensationalise the cause célèbre they wish to
promote. There are also many examples of them inventing stories, or peddling war
propaganda, either inadvertently or because they support the cause in
question.We live in an age which boasts of being awash with information.
In fact, permanent foreign correspondents have been massively cut back in the
last decades. The field is therefore clear for journalists to travel to, or
report on, situations in countries about which, in fact, we know very little and
to draw on the blank page of people’s ignorance fantastic stories which, in
fact, are based either on little evidence or on sheer bias.Recently,
this old trend has undergone a slight modification. Celebrities who are not
journalists have sought to burnish their status by using it to supporting
fashionable political causes. In recent days, we have seen George Clooney
arrested for a demonstration against Sudan and Angelina Jolie, who has just
acted in a film about the Bosnian civil war, attending the session of the
International Criminal Court at which that Court handed down its first
conviction. The political value of such celebrity involvement was made clear
when the Prosecutor of the ICC – not the press office of the Court itself –
issued a proud press communiqué about Jolie. Celebrity actors, in other words,
are blurring the difference between entertainment and criminal procedure, just
as journalists have for a long time blurred the difference between reporting and
campaigning.
The result is a new phenomenon: interventionism by media. The media beat-up
has become a common event. A media beat-up involves the Western mainstream media
picking on a particular foreign country – often a small one or a third world one
but never a large member of the Western alliance – and portraying its government
in a bad light. This has most recently been focused on Russia during its
election campaign. The characteristics of this beat-up are often the same: a
complex situation or conflict is presented in stark black-and-white terms, the
government is the villain, and the head of state is singled out for particular
vilification.Although it not one of the most famous cases, the attacks
by British media on Sri Lanka are a case in point. Two Channel 4 documentaries
attacking Sri Lanka’s “killing fields” have brought campaigning journalism to a
new level because the message communicated is so specifically interventionist.
The producer, Callum Macrae, physically went to the UN in Geneva during the 19th
session of the Human Rights Council (where his earlier documentary on the same
subject had been screened last year) because it is clear that he is de facto
also involved in the campaign in favour of the hostile resolution brought
against Sri Lanka by the government of the United States of America. He did not
report on the fact that he is doing the American government’s dirty work when he
wrote on The Huffington Post web site:I’m writing this in Geneva where –
behind the scenes of the United Nations Human Rights Council – frantic lobbying
is going on over a modest resolution which calls on the Sri Lankan government to
implement the proposals of its own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission
and institute a credible independent inquiry into the allegations of war crimes
which should report back to the UN in a year’s time.The vote is
significant, partly because it represents a real test of the UN’s ability and
willingness to confront the issue and its own failure to carry out its
‘responsibility to protect’ over the appalling carnage at the end of the Sri
Lankan civil war.The Sri Lankan regime, headed by President Mahinda
Rajapaksa and his brother, the defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, are doing
as they have always done, denying every allegation, claiming that the footage in
our films is fake and angrily denouncing UN estimates of up to 40,000 dead as a
wild exaggeration.Apart from its spelling mistakes (corrected here) this
quote is notable for its bias. Sri Lanka’s denials are “angry” and they come
from a “regime.” The hostile and interventionist resolution, meanwhile, is
“modest”. The reporter does not say that the “responsibility to protect” and
interventionism he supports are hugely controversial political issues, the
latter having been specifically rejected in the resolution voted by the Human
Rights Council on Sri Lanka in 2009. He also does not say that the countries
pushing the concept of R2P are the United States, the United Kingdom and the
other powerful states of the West: we never hear of interventionism by weak
states against strong ones.The first documentary, “Sri Lanka’s killing
fields”, was broadcast on 14 June 2011; the second on 14 March 2012 during the
19th session of the Human Rights Council. Channel 4 has such a right-on
reputation in the United Kingdom that few pause to ask why it is so avidly doing
the British government’s work: the British Foreign Office is, with the US
Department of State, the source of by far the most hostile propaganda against
that island state and this is why the Foreign Office Minister for South Asia
issued a communiqué praising Channel 4 for its work.More disturbingly
still, Channel 4′s star presenter, Jon Snow, has, like other celebrities,
specifically called for criminal prosecution. In the 2011 broadcast, he said
that his programme had collected “evidence to convict” members of the Sri Lankan
government. Does Snow not understand the key concepts of the presumption of
innocence and due process? The latter involves a comprehensive Defence of the
kind totally absent from his broadcast. Channel 4 evidently wanted to produce
for Sri Lanka the same sort of documentary as that which repeatedly
misrepresented events in Yugoslavia and which was screened in court by
international prosecutors. Channel 4 news has quite rightly been accused of
engaging in “kangaroo court journalism.”But Snow and his colleagues are
not just bad lawyers, they are bad journalists too. The star witness in the 2011
film was Vany Kumar, also known under other names including Damilvani
Gnanakumar. Presented as a volunteer in a hospital, she was in fact a fully
trained military cadre of the LTTE (“Tamil Tigers”) terrorist movement fighting
the Sri Lankan government. Snow alleged that the government forcibly displaced
hundreds of thousands of civilians caught up in the bloody end of the war, when
every human rights organisation stated that the Tamil Tigers forcibly displaced
them to use as human shields. While alleging that the government had shelled
hospitals, Channel 4 ignored evidence that the Tigers had deliberately shelled
the hospitals in question. Channel 4 News’ own star witness, former UN spokesman
Gordon Weiss, previously noted that the government had gone out of its way to
reduce civilian casualties. The documentary broadcast in March 2012 was but a
re-hash of stale claims made the previous year. Just days before it went out,
Channel 4 contacted the Sri Lankan government but left so little time for any
response that it was obvious that this was only for form’s sake and to pre-empt
the criticism, which it in fact deserved, that the programme was
one-sided.Channel 4 also boasted of its own role in conducting agitation
at the UN for punitive interventionism on this issue and therefore generally. It
energetically peddles the line that war crimes must be investigated and punished
by the United Nations in order for peace to be maintained. This may seem obvious
to some, but is it true? The opposite argument can also be made, that peace is
better built by letting bygones be bygones. There are many examples of
post-conflict resolution being based on amnesty not punishment, from Northern
Ireland to South Africa: it is a bitter irony that Amnesty International, which
was created to campaign for this, now campaigns for the
opposite.Post-conflict prosecutions can fan the flames of resentment and
the desire for revenge, especially on the part of the losing side in a war. If
there is evidence that prosecutions – especially ones initiated by biased
Western journalists and international bodies like the Human Rights Council,
which have shown themselves to be easily influenced by unproven claims –
necessarily lead to peace, then Channel 4 should provide it. It should also
explain why the Northern Ireland peace process and the South African Truth and
Reconciliation Commission were based on the very opposite logic, that of
forgiving and forgetting. Or perhaps it believes that there one rule for the
West and its favourite allies but another for its enemies?