Hands off my TV, please!
The Minister of Mass Media and Information, Anura Priyadarshana Yapa, in Gazette Extraordinary dated 10th October, reveals the overarching magic that is the Private Television Broadcasting Station Regulations of 2007.
Section 13(e), lists outs the conditions under which the license given to a TV broadcasting company can be cancelled. Namely, they are the broadcasting of programmes that are,
- detrimental to the interests of national security;
- inciting breakdown of public order;
- inciting ethnic, religious or cultural hatred;
- in violation of any laws of the country;
- morally offensive or indecent;
- detrimental to the rights and privileges of children;
- in violation of the code of ethics, standards and practices of Television Broadcasting.
Whilst 4 and 6 I can understand, everything all else falls into areas and issues already used by the State to curb the freedom of expression and stifle independent media. All these points are open to arbitrary interpretation by the Minister and we know through bitter experience how the Rajapakse regime interprets ‘national security’, public order, hatred and (somewhat ironically) morality and decency.
The cancellation of the license lies also wholly at the discretion of the Minister who is the same bloke who said that only one journalist had been killed in 2007.Â
The Mahinda Chinthanaya, the 2005 election manifesto of the President, promises that “… State media will be made to be the highest example in the use of independent and responsible media, and towards this, the state media will be de-politicized”. It’s evident that the President has failed to deliver. Worse, aided and abetted by him, brutish and self-serving members of the Government have managed to politicize the state media in an unprecedented manner and at the same time silence independent, critical voices in the media.
Forget about the promised duty free computers, forget about the duty free cars and motor cycles, forget about building houses and scholarships.
Just keep your dirty fingers off my TV please.
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Yes, the regulations for media is good. As a father of 2, I really would like that to happen in Sri Lanka. Some of the Sri Lankan Television channels are not suitable for children. Sri Lanka has got a good cultural values. If you have been raised in such a culture you should understand how important our cultural values are. The problem is that those international media mafia and international organizations don’t understand those cultual values. They just want to give 100% freedom for the media to telecast what ever they want. Some of the media channels in Sri Lanka are telecasting programs that is harmfull for the culture and our religions. It should be noted that some channels use this freedom to reach their political goals and pro-LTTE channels are using that end-less freedom to break the country into pieces.
So as a government it’s responsibility is to uplift the country but not helping the international organizations to break the country into pieces. The government should know what is most important. Media freedom is good as long as it’s used to the well being of the people in the country and make sure their security.
Government should not do any thing to give the freedom for the media who support LTTE. All the media stations who support LTTE in any means should be banned. Why should they help killing more. We have already suffered enough due to this LTTE problem.
Mr.Suraji seems to have much to say about the article. But he de-railed himself with the LTTE-mind-set. I thought he was going to say about the education of his children being distracted by the programs in the TV. But he branched off to the LTTE culture (gun-culture) without going into the new culture of bribery and corruption and the other culture of injustice and discrimination both of which along with gun culture are against the Buddhist culture. For the time being I will just forget about the cultures of other religions.
If the letter and spirit of the Constitution with all its amendments is upheld and implemented in full, the regulations mentioned in the article may not be necessary.
In my opinion the regulations might have been copied from the Malaysian or Singaporean Governments, which we are trying to follow.