DailyMirror
Editor Sirimalwatta offers to publish correction
Pursuant to the expression of regret by the Lanka Irida Editor, the Supreme Court yesterday (25) warned and discharged him from the purported contempt of court charges.
The charges were taken up before the Bench headed by Chief Justice Asoka de Silva. The court also directed the Editor to publish a correction pertaining to the news item in question with the same prominence in his newspaper. The Chief Justice advised newspapers not to publish misleading, false and erroneous news items and asked them to double check before they publish anything. He pointed out that once erroneous news was published the damage done was hard to correct.
Counsel Saliya Peiris appeared for the Respondent Editor Chandana Ratnayake, who expressed his regret for the publication of the said news item. Expressing his regret he told Court that neither he or the editorial board of “Lanka Irida Sangrahaya” or “Lanka Fast Publishers Ltd” had any intention directly or indirectly of bringing the Judiciary into contempt by publishing the news item titled “HE the President influences the Judiciary to reinstate a bribery suspect” or by its title published in the June 27 issue of “Lanka Irida Sangrahaya”.
He said he would publish the following correction: “The first sentence of the first paragraph of the relevant news item which states, “The President has sent a letter to the Judiciary pressurizing it to release a suspect in a bribery case” is incorrect and include further that the sentence “Here is the letter sent by the President to the Judicial Services Commission directing it to release the bribery suspect” in the same paragraph was incorrect as well. Deputy Solicitor General Sanjay Rajaratnam with Senior State Counsel Nerin Pulle appeared for the Attorney General. Shibly Aziz PC appeared for the Bar Association of Sri Lanka.
The Editor Chandana Ratnayake alias Chandana Sirimalwatta, also known as Jagath Gunathilake in respect of the byline in a news item published in the said Sinhala weekly, which in the opinion of Court considered amounted to an attempt to erode public confidence in the administration of justice.