To justify the action in denying entry to Rae, pro-establishment journalists and other apologists have tried to portray him as a supporter of the LTTE without an iota of evidence. The standards of integrity of some journalists with a political agenda have been exposed in the Groundviews web blog, A senior journalist writing a political column in another Sunday newspaper tries to make out that Rae was an LTTE supporter and refers to the following sentence in his biographical details allegedly published in the online Wikipedia encyclopedia: “(Rae) is known as a supporter of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), and has supported openly for a separate State for the Tamils in Sri Lanka by dividing the island into two” But Groundviews’ investigation has revealed that Bob Rae’s profile was first entered to Wikipedia on 23 June 2003. This particular sentence (in line with the defence establishment’s reasons for refusal of entry) first appeared on Rae’s profile on Wikipedia on 11th June and was up there for less than 12 hours. The edit with this controversial sentence was made by an anonymous contributor at 6.31 hrs on 11 June and by 17.12hrs, it had been taken out.

Is it merely a curious coincidence that the journalist has ignored Rae profile that has appeared in Wikipedia for seven years and chosen to quote a sentence that was inserted by an anonymous contributor and which was up for less than 12 hours? Surely, senior journalists need not be reminded of Scott’s well known dictum for journalists: ‘Comment is free but facts are sacred’. And journalists who publish ‘news’ received from tainted sources do so at the peril of their journalistic integrity.”

Taken from The IDPs need to be treated just like other citizens, published in The Island, 20 June 2009

If you have any concerns about the content here, given your prolific and verbose comments, I’m surprised you were silent about it without querying respective authors?

As for standards, if you looked around the site you may have encountered this. It appears that Migara / Sinha’s myopia is sadly contagious.

I have a lot of concern with majority of the “journalistic” articles published here with no references at all. Though I see it is getting better now, slightly. If you promote this blog as journalistic type then please the codes of ethics and standards that applies to journalism applies to this blog too. But we don’t even see a Wiki reference in most of the articles! Some articles, you just have to wonder how it got through an editor.

I’m not trying to say this blog is bad, all I’m saying is all of you’re paddling in the same boat. Trying to find moral high ground is just ……. Please don’t censor this. Thanks.

The ST Editor’s comments are amusing indeed. I have more readers –> my stuff is always better –> I am not subject to criticism from people with less readers. Then replace “readers” with “awards” and repeat. As he says, the “proof” exists because “people vote with their wallets”.

This argument might hold if journalism isn’t also a business, if people aren’t creatures of habit, and if the target audience only subscribes to one newspaper. I read all of the SL papers, myself. But I read them online, of course — a fool and his money are soon parted.

SL journalism has already witnessed a sharp decline in quality that compounds the more obvious threat to Southern journalists (which has been happening to Tamil journalists for quite some years before, but as Lasantha alluded to, then they were through eliminating Tamils and came for him). But I think the elephant in the room for many is that this issue of SL journalism stems from the deterioration of all institutions in SL. The impunity afforded, the wrecked institutions ignored are the allowances that were given to the govt. by the SL populace when they voted the Pres.’s administration in and supported the Final War policies. We have to own this situation, too, to own our faults before we can reclaim our agency and correct those faults, if we are to effect lasting change.

Some of our journalists (Sinha, Gamini, et.al.) are racists at heart and yet they are desperate for the acceptance of those who are not…

Funny how they (Politicians & Journalists) sell their souls from opposite ends of the divide and yet they are so much alike.

My response to the post on Voices in Exile you point to, still awaiting moderation, was as follows:

Hi,

Thanks for this super follow up. I stand corrected on the issue of using Wikipedia as a source in Sunday articles. The two excellent AJR articles I point to in the piece on Groundviews clearly note the potential and pitfalls of using Wikipedia in particular and web based sources in general.

The examples you point to above are very revealing! I’m happy to engage in conversation on how best online sources can be referenced, or whether they can be at all. The point I was trying to make is that whereas Groundviews, for example, points to Wikipedia references through the Apture plugin and direct hyperlinks, at no point has an allegation as serious as the one made against Rae by the Sunday Times being based on a Wikipedia article alone.

When bad journalism marries contentious web sources, the result is a product that through ignorance or malevolence misdirects and misinforms the public. While on the one hand this is a strong case for strengthening media literacy, it is also a strong case to urgently develop capacities of senior journalists and Editors to more fruitfully leverage the web and Internet in support of independent and professional reporting.

We all use it, even Groundviews. Actually, so do The Island, the Sunday Observer, and The Sunday Leader. But you know, I’m actually glad that they cite their sources. This shows that they have some journalistic integrity, if that’s any consolation. I mean, it could be worse. In fact, all of these traditional print Sri Lankan newspapers use Wikipedia and cite it as a source when they do. How odd! Now there is a story worth investigating…

I don’t know why this whole discussion has become a back-and-forth between Sanjana and Sunday Times supporters, only. It’s now endemic of all Sri Lankan journalism. According to the website, even award-winning Iqbal Athas used it. I’m sure Wikipedia is just the most obvious manifestation of a more fundamental issue here.

So….. we’re all in this together. What do we say?