How should the world’s armies respond to cri­ti­cism or neg­at­ive stor­ies in the media? Well they could take note of the health­ily robust approach demon­strated by Sri Lanka’s Min­istry of Defence. They tackle crit­ics head on! Check out a piece from their web­site below:

Mr. Iqbal Athas, stop insult­ing our sol­diers’ sacrifices

A free press or media can only flour­ish in a free soci­ety. In today’s world what threatens free soci­ety is ter­ror­ism, irre­spect­ive of its root cause. Whether it stems from com­mun­al­ism or reli­gious extrem­ism, ter­ror­ism is indeed a threat to a free soci­ety and there­fore to the free­dom of the media. Unfor­tu­nately, in our coun­try there are some self-appointed free media cham­pi­ons who do not seem to under­stand this. Per­chance, they do not want to, because pro­mot­ing ter­ror­ism may have become a luc­rat­ive busi­ness for them.

Mr. Iqbal Athas seems to be one such journ­al­ist who has been pan­der­ing to serve the needs of a ruth­less ter­ror­ist out­fit which is built on extreme com­mun­al­ism. Being a senior journ­al­ist and per­son who has earned lot of money and gained a repu­ta­tion by writ­ing defence columns to local and inter­na­tional print media, Mr. Athas’ recent work raises doubts whether he has been assist­ing in the psy­cho­lo­gical oper­a­tions of the LTTE terrorists.

In his most recent art­icle in the Sunday Times this week, which was head­lined “Heavy cas­u­al­ties as battles in north intensify”, Mr. Athas has clearly attemp­ted to hood­wink his read­ers on the actual defence situ­ation in the north by shrewdly manip­u­lat­ing facts.

It is our duty to inform our view­ers on the actual defence situ­ation in the north, while ask­ing them to ques­tion the pos­sible motives behind Mr. Athas’ abom­in­able attempt to desec­rate the sac­ri­fices of our soldiers.

Of course, this kind of no-nonsense approach out­rages lib­eral defend­ers of journ­al­ism like the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Journ­al­ists:

We wrote to you on Octo­ber 2, 2007, about writ­ten and verbal attacks that appeared on the Min­istry of Defence’s Web site about Iqbal Athas, con­sult­ant editor and defense cor­res­pond­ent for the Sunday Times of Sri Lanka. The accus­a­tions effect­ively equated Athas’ journ­al­ism with ter­ror­ism, after he repor­ted on set­backs the army faced in fight­ing with Tamil seces­sion­ists. The lengthy attack on Athas’ report­ing accused him of “insult­ing our sol­diers’ sac­ri­fices” and claims his report­ing “has been assist­ing in the psy­cho­lo­gical oper­a­tions of the LTTE ter­ror­ists.” The art­icle claims that “pro­mot­ing ter­ror­ism had become a luc­rat­ive busi­ness” for Athas. Athas was awar­ded CPJ’s Inter­na­tional Press Free­dom Award in 1994.

I mean, any­one would think the MoD were pick­ing on Athas! Not at all. They are scru­pu­lous in attack­ing a whole range of journ­al­ists. Here’s their latest:

It has been observed that cer­tain seg­ments of media in Sri Lanka have been striv­ing to tar­nish the good image of those gov­ern­ment offi­cials dir­ectly involved in the war against ter­ror­ism. Purely on com­mer­cial interests, these sec­tions of the media spin their own stor­ies to suit their agenda and mis­lead the public.

In a recent art­icle in the Daily Mir­ror, a writer blames army for not giv­ing a decent burial to sol­diers died in the bat­tle­front. In that fea­ture art­icle, the Daily Mir­ror wants its read­ers to believe that army burns bod­ies of sol­diers who sac­ri­fice their lives in battle, an not send them home for funer­als, to down play the cas­u­alty figures..

Defence.lk does not intend to provide any com­ment on this miser­able story since its view­ers may know the truth by simply inquir­ing from a sol­dier or some­body who has even the least know­ledge of mil­it­ary matters.

Such stor­ies may give some pleas­ure to a news­pa­per editor whose sole inten­tion get bet­ter perks; but for a sol­dier who risks his life in the front­lines it cer­tainly hurts to see how their sac­ri­fices are desec­rated by money hungry media industrialists.

The gen­eral pub­lic derives its per­cep­tion of the wider real­ity bey­ond dir­ect per­sonal exper­i­ence via the media. When the major media all sing a sim­ilar tune the pub­lic gen­er­ally assumes it is being hon­estly informed. This is why ter­ror­ists’ organ­iz­a­tions often invest their blood cash on media people. Such invest­ments always provide pro­pa­ganda bon­anza for the ter­ror­ist out­fits to fur­ther their cause.

Thus, what defence.lk wants to under­score is that this hate­ful media cam­paign against secur­ity forces will gain more vigour as the sol­diers get closer to their noble mis­sion; i.e.: to free the coun­try from terrorism.

It is true not every one of our view­ers may have the time or interest to become well-informed on the many issues and sort things out. Yet, they still may be aware that all these self assumed “Watch Dogs” always have a loud “Bark” but a little “Bite”. Today, these sec­tions of the media are noth­ing more than big busi­ness and far removed from their role of inform­ing the pub­lic. It appears that selling lies for money also comes under media freedom!!!

If you want more advice on how to toughen your military’s online response to defeat­ist media, just get in touch with your local Sri Lankan embassy. They’ll be sure to help!