Fact Checking The Telegraph (With Google)
This Telegraph article by Dean Nelson is bad journalism.
The UK press coverage of Sri Lanka is nonsense. This is partly Sri Lanka’s fault for limiting access. Western reporters listen to people with whatever agenda without, like, reporting. Because, frankly, they can’t. In a terrorist war the whole place became a warzone and freedom of the press has been suspended. Which sucks. However, chilling out for 15 minutes and waiting while Sri Lanka wraps up a 30 year war is an option. Or at least working harder and actually reporting. I can’t fact check the most recent poorly reported article out of the Telegraph that deeply, but it doesn’t even survive a cursory Googling.
I haven’t been to Trinco for a month and I won’t be able to go to a Batti for a week at least. There is a bunch of stuff which is very serious and cited to one anonymous source. I understand the constraints, but that is still garbage reporting. You can publish nothing instead of publishing bad, poorly sourced info. I think it’s actually more responsible.
Here are some blatantly false things which they could have fact checked with Google. And didn’t.
Another aid worker said the killings were part of a strategy to drive out the Tamils.
“Eastern province is vulnerable, there’s cleansing by the Sinhalese. There will be more problems with land grabbing. The demography changes and the Tamils who are the majority will soon become a minority,” he said.
Tamils are not a majority in the East and have not been since Independence. Right now Tamils and Muslims (Moors) are 40% and 37% respectively (Wikipedia).
Also
A new road being constructed from Serubilla, a Sinhalese village in Trincomalee district to Polonaruwa, a Tamil village, was under construction and Sinhalese families were being settled on either side of the road as it snakes further north-east.
I can’t find detailed demographics on Polonnaruwa, but it’s, er, not a Tamil city to the best of my knowledge. Since, like, the Chola dynasty, in like 1070. The Polonnaruwa District is about 2% Tamil according to admittedly old census data (statistics.gov.lk PDF). Populations often have more minority pop (Hambantota town is mostly Muslim, for example). But I don’t think one could reasonably call Polonnaruwa a Tamil village. I think it’s neither Tamil nor a village.
Beyond that there are other accusations which I could fact check if I was out there.
Many Tamils sold their homes and land at below-market prices after members of their families had been killed or had disappeared, he said…
“Thousands of Sinhalese are coming in, getting government land and government assistance from the south. It’s causing huge tensions,” he said.
He and others fear this model will now be applied to the north where the final army onslaught to defeat the Tamil Tigers left 95 per cent of the buildings demolished or heavily damaged.
Well, to start, property records can be checked. It’s boring, but if you make phone calls and visit offices you can find these things. Second, if thousands of Sinhalese are coming in you can find out where, get in the car and go see if there are indeed settlements. If a source tells you this they can presumably tell you town. Then you can go to that town and ask a local trishaw driver if he noticed thousands of Sinhalese moving in. Finally, the LTTE hasn’t allowed a proper census in its areas for years, so I’m curious as to one got a count of buildings, but a stat with single digit accuracy presumably has a source, which one could site.
The article also has accusations of ethnic cleansing and killing which I believe should be followed up seriously. However, the rest of the reporting is so shoddy that it calls the broader conclusions into question. Reporting does not consist of hearing stuff from anonymous sources and publishing it without even a cursory fact checking. Seriously, I just looked this stuff up Google. Sri Lanka needs better reporting for sure, but shame on the Telegraph. I understand that your job is hard right now, but sometimes journalists just have to work harder. For future articles, try this link for some of the quotes you get.
This post references an article in the telegraph.co.uk called Sri Lanka accused of ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Tamil areas, written by Dean Nelson. I believe it is bad journalism because it has very serious accusations and one named source and what appears to be zero research or reporting. I’m leaving this post in the ‘comment form‘ because they don’t seem to allow public comments on their articles. If you’d like to leave a comment cool but try not to act all crazy cause reason is actually on our side.
Today on the 
Janith has updated 
This is highly dubious. Miss Travel is a travel/social networking site that connects ‘Generous’ and ‘Attractive’ travelers. To, like, travel together, I guess. It all seems a bit like arranged prostitution and trafficking. This is part of a broader online trend to connect rich men to younger, attractive women. Sites like 
Sri Lankan domestics never say anything, they just stop coming. My maid just stopped coming and when I finally pressed her she said I needed to get a washing machine. I was hoping to ride this one out, but I’ve run out of underwear and I have no choice. I finally caved and bought a washing machine, from 
All of Kottu can breathe a sigh of relief secure in the complete knowledge that we have a candid protagonist telling these dictatorial hypocrites what is what!
that’s just uncharitable. You’re not even granting the premise of his argument–which is that british journalism is of dubious quality; fact-checking and the regular attribution of multiple named sources are not considered standard operating procedures on Fleet Street. (and all of that is mostly true)
Dean Nelson is actually the Telegraph’s Asia Editor
his blog: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/dean_nelson
The byline read, “Dean Nelson in Trincomalee” so presumably he is actually in SL and has access to the mysterious thing Indi calls “google” as well as various gov’t mouthpieces.
Also, Mr. Nelson credulously quotes, without context, the illustrious kidnapper of child soldiers and renowned Tiger…sorry vice president of the SLFP, Col. Karuna, for a story on true casualty figures:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/srilanka/5362832/Sri-Lankan-minister-admits-army-killed-civilians.html
So, probably just the average career journalist–aggrieved at the inroads made by new media into his/her domain and unwilling to expend the ‘shoe leather’ they feel the new competition lacks.
What a prosperous article Dean has written! I wonder how these journalists get into large and recognised newspapers, such as telegraph.co.uk.. They obviously don’t know what they are talking about and without any factual evidence, who can ever beleive what they will report in the future?
Sorry..I meant to say ‘preposterous’, not ‘prosperous’…:P
Bad and/or sensationalist ‘reporting’ seems the norm rather than the exception when it come to the British press.
I’ve lightly touched on this issue on a facebook post – you’ve got the irresponsible journalism/ where the fug do they get their press-credentials/ google should be a mandatory test for these nutbuckets part of it down, I’ve gone for a more sensationalist/ business media angle, here’s an excerpt (thought really):
Aside from the demographics they cater to, and schema that each venture to push, it really is a question of access and economics. Correspondents and their media groups compete for eyeballs and readership; the less ground they have to cover, the more they compete over slivers of intelligence. And, as in the case of Sri Lanka, where international media groups have become increasingly regarded with suspicion and hostility, they are often rebuffed and denied access to the stories they want to cover, they tend to capitalize on the marginal ground—often unscrutinised, mostly hyperbole, and largely mis-representative.
Information, when thin, is a more precious commodity, and the marginal returns on it will be supernormal—each media group, as we’ve seen during the past few months will stake out their ground and exploit their small territory to capture and sustain their audiences on a story so apt to become stale without the requisite sensationalism and suffering of a witness-less war in an obscure part of the world.
Well it is a fact that the Government is building housing for the families of several thousand military personnel in Welikanda under the Ranaviru Housing Project. This is being done with the money collected through the Api Venuwen Api Fund. Construction work has already started on these houses. Many of the families that these houses will be given to will come from the Wayamba, Uva and Southern provinces and will only be Sinhalese.
It is also a fact that Tamils who lived in the Sampur area were asked to leave after the military took it back from the LTTE. These displaced villages are now being resettled elsewhere with the help of UNHCR while Sinhala villagers from the area are being settled in the Sampur HSZ. Call and ask UNHCR about this. They don’t like it either, but they would rather resettle people in the land the Government designates for them than wait for the HSZs to be removed.
And since you love to quote wikipedia Indi perhaps you should also consider how the demographic in the Eastern province with relation to Tamils and Sinhalese has changed in the past 120 years. Tamils have gone from being almost 60% to just 40% today while the Sinhalese have gone from about 5% to 25%. Don’t just bend data to fit your story. Actually crunch the numbers and see what you get.
Indi maybe you don’t have a monopoly on knowing what’s actually going on. In my opinion you’re as blind as you claim Dean Nelson to be. You have your own agenda and you’re also just using random bits of information that you have to further that agenda, regardless of whether that information is true/verifiable or not.
True, but I try to get my random bits of information right and people correct me if I’m wrong. I’d never publish something as sloppy and poorly sourced as Dean Nelson’s article, and I’m certain people commenting here wouldn’t let me get away with it.
The demographical change you describe can be largely attributed to the change in the way people of that region identify themselves over the last 120 years. i.e. Muslims distinguishing themselves by religion rather than by language.
What is wrong with Sinhalese or Muslims or any other Sri Lankan going north and what is wrong with Tamils coming down South? If I had money, I would move north too and start a farm or something.
Yeah, I never got that either. Why not? It’s one island.
Well, obviously the Tamils would worry about a change in the demographic, wouldn’t they? In political terms, if the Tamils became a minority in the NE as well, they would lose the ability to elect Tamil representatives to parliament, PCs, etc. If ethnicity and language were no longer issues in SL, then no, Sinhalese moving north would not be a prob any more than Tamils moving south. But these are issues, and the Tamils fear being diluted to the point of losing the ability to be represented.
ethnic vote banks are swell in the short run but, over time, they become moral hazard millstones slung round the neck of the concerned polity–in the short run you get much needed political clout but in the long run you get entrenched ethnic political machines with the attendant problems of corruption related to the rents historically diverted by easily corruptible representatives. That’s the rock and the hard place.
It wasn’t an issue at all until the 50s, when Chelvanayagam made it one, and it didn’t become a popular grievance until the 1970s. Our nationalists today decry the colonisation of the “dry zone” by Sinhala peasants as an insidious plot to destroy the traditional Tamil homeland, but in actuality many of the people who actually drafted and implemented the policy were Tamils – people like K. Kanagasundaram, M. Sri Kantha and others. These people were contemporaries of my grandfather (and I’m related to one of them), and at that time nobody thought there was anything wrong with Sinhalese settling in the north or east of the country. They were on the contrary proud of this as a great Ceylonese achievement.
As David very rightly points out, ethnicity and language are fundamental issues in our country today, but they weren’t then. I hope we’ll be able to get back to that attitude somehow.
indi – there is an effective press complaints commission n the UK and I would urge you to submit this post to them http://www.pcc.org.uk/
;-)
Janaka: I’m interested in the issue you bring you, and would really like to know more, with good evidence, if possible. These issues are important, but like Indi, I often find that the discussion is far from the facts.
From what’s public, according to Api Wenuwen Api, there are two housing sites under construction in the 50 000 houses scheme. 10 000 houses are to be built each year according the the plan, and some 1000 + houses are being built in two sites, Ipalogama and Horowupotana, both in the Anuradhapura district. The first is on the Eppawella – Kalaweva road, and second at the a29 turn off, on the Kabathigollawe road.
These is a Rana viru village in Welikanda, but there is no claim of construction there, and that’s different from the Api Wenuwen Api housing scheme. That’s in the Polonnaruwe district.
Are you suggesting that there are other constructions that are surreptitious? Going on in secret? And that are in the Eastern Province? Can you offer evidence, please?
The HSZ in Sampur comes out of the construction of a mega power plant there by the Nation Thermal Power Cooperation (of India). Negotiations for this took place some time ago; this plant was to across the habour in Chinabay where Lanka IOC already controls the fabled oil Tankfarms, but was shifted later. Much of this is part of Sri Lanka’s geopolitical relationship with India; its really not about any thing else. You are right people have been moved out.
Are the new people being moved in construction workers? Permanent settlers? Really?
It is difficult to think in any event, that the area around a massive coal fired plant would be an ideal residential zone, so I would worry about any one living there.
you think the telegraph is bad, just read what the Guardian publishers. they let this so called tamil representative Suren Surendiran (who is obviously a LTTE terrorist) write frequently. read and make your own mind up!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/19/tamil-cause-global-awareness
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/28/sri-lanka-tamil-civilians-david-miliband
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/21/sri-lanka-tamil-tigers-protest-parliament
Velu and his band of Tamil Terrorists may have vanished into thin air but we’re fortunate to have the hypocritical-naive-interfering-whiteman to spew at … thank god, we don’t have to ask ourselves the hard questions.