Sri Lankan Papers Suck
as if the papers aren’t bad enough, i get an eyeful of titty from Mahinda. The bad ‘what is wrong with me’ kind.
Blogs traditionally rehash the mainstream-media, so I’ve been trying to look at the papers/mags here. They are, however, eye-wateringly bad. I won’t get into the design here, but the tilted photos and 4,000 colors make me throw up in my mouth a little. What’s worse is that everything is profoundly biased. I don’t even like the ones that are biased in my direction cause that’s not what I read the news for. I’m hoping for a general perspective, but all I get here are fk op-eds masquerading as news. Today I was reading the Sunday Observer and the front-page had a headline – ‘Insatiable Greed’. Thought it was Mervyn again, but no, they’re tagging Ranil for saying the state media (it) is biased. How they got from that to ‘Insatiable Greed’ is a leap of bullshit. Oh, and Mahinda is a breast man.
I don’t read all the papers, but I think the bias sorta breaks down as.
*Pro SLFP/Government*
a lot of this media is owned by the government, which is a horrible idea if I ever heard one. The Wijewardene’s used to own the Lakehouse publishing empire, and then the Government under Srimavo Bandaranaike simply stole it. The government taking over a free press and seizing private property is disgusting. Anyways, this is the government media I know.
* Daily News
* Sunday Observer (I think)
*UNP/Opposition*
On the other side, there’s Wijeya, restarted by the Wijewardene’s. Incidentally run by Ranil’s relatives. I coincidentally work for them, actually, here’s full disclosure. I am paid by the World Bank to support the capitalist/imperialist takeover of Sri Lanka by Halliburton. Every time I defend Ranil they give me a cookie. These are some Wijeya papers,
* Daily Mirror
* Sunday Times
* Lankadeepa
I personally think the Mirror and Sunday Times are less bald-faced about their slant, but I’m biased anyways. Government media in general sucks, though. It’s just a bad idea, both design and content wise. I wouldn’t wipe my ass with the Daily or The Observer for fear of getting my ass dirty.
One major difference is that something that’s a front page headline in the Mirror (JHU Guy Switches to UNP) will be buried in the Daily. What bothers me more is that press releases and op-ed and run as if its news. Mangala Samaraweera will spout off and the papers will run it verbatim, with 2 lines of rebuttal, if at all. I don’t think any paper should ever run a statement from a campaign manager as a headline. It’s obviously biased. Same on the other side, they’ll just run UNP press releases verbatim.
What I find more annoying is that they’ll run stuff like the ‘Insatiable Greed’ article on the front-page when it belongs in Op-Ed, if anywhere. The papers mainline editorials and I just feel like yelling that it’s not news. Even if I support the opinion, I don’t want to read it on the front-page. And this is why I can’t read the papers.
The only un-biased paper at least to a certain exten is Sunday Times. I think the fact that they have free lance journalists in the clibre of Rajpal and Iqbal Athas is the reason. If you want to get the exact accurate picture of anything to do with politics you will have to read 3/4 papers on Sunday! Sunday Observer,Sunday Times,The Island and Sunday Leader(which is pro-unp). But this combination will have to change if and when the UNP is in governement because then, they will be controlling the Lake House!
Rajpal Abeynayake and Iqbal Athas are not Freelance journalists. They’re both Editorial members of the ST. But yes, the ST is by far the most unbiased paper around.
Yep. ST is pretty neutral compared to daily error.
Here’s an interesting report by CPA.
Ok. It was a mistake to use the word “freelance”. The point I was trying to make was that both of these journalists come out as free thinkers and they let theire opinions out, un-biased. They can afford to do that because they are honest in what they say, IMO. I don’t think many would disagree.
actually one can be honest and very biased. i am not sure whether one can be honest and be totally un-biased.
both the columnist mentioned have very biased opinions and yes the do ‘let their opinions out’.
So den mebbe what da first boy he say: “Sunday Times is unbiased” an’ den say dem colummists are “honest” it makes sense? ‘cos den der paper it be un-biased ‘cos of dem honest colummists?
why you wanna pick nits?
cos den der paper it be un-biased ‘cos of dem honest colummists? – no. a paper has many columnists(honest or not). a paper will become biased if all the columns have the same bias. with sunday times this is not the case.