SRI LANKA
By Sinha Ratnatunga, Editor, The Sunday Times
24 February 2003

The Sri Lankan Press goes back to the 19th century, and is today in the forefront of the country's socio-political affairs.

Newspapers are printed in three languages - Sinhala the language of the majority, Tamil, the language of the minority and English, the link-language. The majority of the newspapers are printed in the capital, Colombo, where the big publishing houses are situated, but smaller regional newspapers are printed from the northern Jaffna district, eastern Batticaloa and central Kandy.

Associated Newspapers (ANCL), better-known as Lake House is by far the largest newspaper publishing house. The Group was taken over by the then Government in the mid-1970s, and is currently managed very much as the voice of the Government, or more accurately,the ruling party.

The several independent newspapers come from the stables of Upali Newspapers, Wijeya Newspapers, Sumathi Newspapers, Leader Publications, and Ravaya Publications catering to a wide array of news and views.

At the time of Independence in 1948, and for many years thereafter, the Sri Lanka Press was reputed as one of the freest and most vibrant in Asia, but this reputation took a beating in the 1970s with the take over of Lake House and the then Times of Ceylon Group under special laws.

In 1974,the Independent Group of Newspapers was sealed under emergency regulations that were introduced to suppress an insurgency and later used to muzzle the Press. The owners of that Group were later honoured by the Commonwealth Press Union with the Lord Astor Award for its stance on Press Freedom.

The battles between the Government and the Press took a turn for the worse in the mid-1990s, when the Government of the day launched serial indictments against editors and publishers of several independent newspapers on charges of criminal defamation.

Not willing to take the witchhunt lying down, journalists belonging to the Free Media Movement, which had campaigned to bring that Government into office, joined hands with the newly formed Editors Guild and the Newspaper Society (union of publishers) in launching a local and international campaign for the repeal of criminal defamation laws, a campaign that lasted seven years and culminated successfully with Parliament repealing these archaic and draconian laws last year.

A new media-friendly Government is now in office under Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe, whose father, Esmond Wickremasinghe, was the enigmatic Managing Director of the Lake House Group at the time of its takeover, is now working with the Newspaper Society the Editors Guild and the Free Media Movement in effecting media reforms.

In addition to having repealed the laws of criminal defamation, the new Government is now in the process of abolishing the statutory Press Council and has expressed its support for the self-regulatory Press Complaints Commission, drafting a Freedom of Information Act, introducing a Contempt of Court Act to protect a journalist's sources and amending the Parliament (Powers and Privileges) Act to make parliamentary reporting less hazardous. Sri Lanka is also blessed with a vibrant electronic media since of late. No longer does the State have a monopoly of radio and television with several private stations with a host of channels servicing the public with 24-hour programmes.