The Daily News is a state owned newspaper. What it publishes parrots and praises the party line and is usually taken with a grain of salt. Lately, however, it requires at least a kilo. The front page has a little box which for weeks has been attacking the Editor of the Sunday Leader personally, even alluding to potential tax investigations. This is chilling coming from a government entity to a private individual, whatever his editorial record.
More recently, this unjournalistic box has taken to echoing the JHU in alluding to people and media that oppose the government as LTTE supporters. This ‘With Us or Against Us’ mentality is both inaccurate and injust, and it’s a shame that it’s being espoused so openly. This government has weakened media through it’s shut-down of CBNSat, re-establishment of monitoring/censorship boards and the firing of Rajpal at the Sunday Observer, but now it is quite bold in its corruption of journalism, in the vicious little slanders on the front page.