Interview with Manik de Silva, Editor of the Sunday Island
Manik de Silva is the most senior and longest-serving Editor of an English newspaper in Sri Lanka. Presently the Editor of the Sunday Island, Manik was also a former Editor of the Daily News. In July 2009, he was elected as the President of the Editors Guild.
I interviewed him in July 2009, just around two months after the end of war. Our conversation touched on aspects of Manik’s life and how he took to journalism, how the media industry and practice of journalism have undergone dramatic change in recent years, the freedom of expression and threats to independent media.
7 Comments
Leave a Reply
Subscribe to Content Updates
iPhone app
Dear Groundviews.. Please try to get an interview with the editor of The Island newspaper as I am a HUGE fan of his editorials.. I know I may be asking way too much, but there are days when I feel my day isn’t complete till I read the Island editorial.. it would be great to see the man behind the print…thanks for this interview though…
I also agree- please try and get some sort of interview with Prabath, the editor of the daily Island- currently the most interesting editorials in the country.
Sanjana:
Thank you for bringing us this interview. I hope tyro journalists are paying attention.
What a colossal mistake it was for an English TV channel to announce Ravi Shankar Sharma, who arrived in Sri Lanka recently, as the Grammy award winning and world renowned sitar player, Pundit Ravi Shankar. It is sad to know that whoever prepared the report did not do his/ her homework. How can one mistake Ravi Shankar Sharma for Pundit Ravi Shankar?
Seeing that they didn’t get this obvious fact right, I shudder to think of everything else that is presented to us as “news”.
The repression of the media by disappearrances,assaults,killings,fleeing abroad, of journalists, and arson attacks of newspaper offices,did not come up in the interview. Maybe the inteviewer and the editor thought this a dangerous thing to discuss in the present situation in the country – they have to survive, hopefully for a future interview!
How about an interview with Fredrica Janz?
ps;: Just wanted to know why you don’t have a picture of Prageeth Eknaligoda who was probably made to vanish courtesy of a ‘White Unidentified Four-Wheeled Object.” You have a pic of lasantha on your site, and you had a pic of tissanayagama when he was in custody? Why the step motherly treatment? Is it because he only wrote in sinhala?
What’s the point of interviewing Janz? She sold out her credibility as an independent journalist when she admitted on her own editorial of her intended bias towards a political party. Not only her but the whole paper’s agenda. She could not have shot her self in the face any better. Any other paper would sacked their editor for such remarks but hey, that’s what the “boss” expects of her.
Dear Observer…There are 3 kinds of newspapers in Sri Lanka.
1) Government Propaganda Newspapers.
2) The bought and paid for, back scratching and apple polishing newspapers like the Island.
and 3) The Sunday Leader which is unbowed and unafraid.
Why not interview Fredrica and let her clarify?