DailyMirror
The State and Independent Media Organisations Alliance yesterday said that the Government is utilizing the state media to promote the election campaign of one particular Presidential candidate thereby tarnishing the image of state media and lowering its standards.
The media organisations expressed their views at a press conference held at the Press Institute yesterday. Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation Television Programme Producer, A.M.A.H.K Alagiyawanna said that the media organisation is losing millions of rupees each day due to an excessive number of programmes and advertisements telecast on behalf of one candidate.
“Usually, any Government that comes into power utilizes the state media to boost their image. However since the decision to hold a presidential election was made public the state media has been exploited to an extreme level.” Alagiyawanna said.“When the presidential election was made official, the Election Commissioner immediately sent a letter to us stating that we must maintain an unbiased view in our news bulletins and maintain that we have no political obligations. However, we were told to ignore the Election Commissioner’s request,” he said.
He said that several programmes including the ‘Tharunyata Hetak’ Programme take up a large amount of air time which allows the allocation of only a limited amount of air time for advertisements. “As a result we are losing millions of rupees each day,” he said. He also added that the supply of state newspapers has declined rapidly in the past five years.
Associate Newspapers Deputy Features Editor, Sanjeewa Samarasinghe said that on January 1 19,000 copies of the Dinamina were burnt and disposed after it was found that a letter with regard to another Presidential candidate was published in the newspaper.“The newspapers were disposed because the article was thought to be in favour of the candidate,” he explained.
“Although the Supreme Court placed an order on the state media to remain impartial after a fundamental rights petition was filed, state media officials were asked to continue with the biased news programmes,” Free Media Movement Secretary, Sunil Jayasekara said. He said that the Elections Commissioner has directly instructed the state electronic media newsroom to follow his guidelines but they have not been adhered to.
“Contrary to what people believe we have no political motivations. However the reputation of the state media is rapidly deteriorating and the funds available to state media institutions are declining,” he said.