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| Resigned journalists expose two faces of Hana & FMM |
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(Lanka-e-News-23.June.2012, 4.50PM)
Dear Hana,
At 9:30 a.m. on June 14, Thursday, you summoned a meeting of the editorial staff at the Ceylon Today news desk, where you announced that the management had decided to terminate Lalith’s services, and asked you to take over the running of the newspaper. You said Lalith had been removed because the management felt Lalith was not falling in line with ‘editorial policy’ and was not pursuing the same editorial course as Ceylon Today’s sister newspaper Mawbima.
When we tendered our resignations to you last Thursday at your office, you appealed to us to reconsider our decision, assuring us that - like us - you were deeply disturbed by the events leading up to Lalith Allahakkoon’s dismissal by the management of Ceylon Newspapers. You told us that you disagreed with the way the management had gone about dismissing a senior editor and said that your heart was with us. You informed us that if you were in a position to do so, as a free media activist, you would be standing beside us on principle, and that you would be the first out the door.
You even told us that you were in discussions with the management to convince them to reinstate Lalith and agreed with us that if the management could be so callous in its treatment of such a senior editor, no journalist, including yourself was safe.
Imagine our disappointment then, to learn that in your capacity as a trustee of the Free Media Movement, you have sought to influence their reaction to Lalith’s sacking, going so far as to cast doubts about the nature of his sacking and even attempting to portray it as an internal company matter.
As you well know, Lalith’s employment was terminated last week due to political reasons, and the management cited his alleged association with the Opposition Leader and the United National Party as a reason for his dismissal. At the same time, the management accused him of failing to toe the editorial policy of the management which serves the political agenda of DNA MP Tiran Alles, who is also the Chairman of the company.
Far from being an ‘internal company matter’, the reasons laid out by the management for Lalith’s sacking clearly relate to issues of editorial independence and non-partisan reporting: a fact we underscored in our resignation letters.
If it were merely an internal matter, why did you assert on Thursday June 14, to Lalith in our presence and later to the four of us who resigned from our positions at Ceylon Today, that you were shocked and upset at the manner in which he was terminated? Why did you tell us that as a free media activist, you were deeply sympathetic with the stand we had decided to take?
At the time of us writing this letter, there has been no official statement from the FMM. There has been no show of solidarity, at a time when many in the industry have shown so. The Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association has issued a statement, and many civil society activists have personally shown their solidarity.
We understand that as Lalith’s successor at Ceylon Today, you are under incredible duress by the management to toe the company line. We also know that your position at the FMM means that the management would expect you to prevent media rights groups raising concern about the summary dismissal of an editor, to prevent bad publicity for the newspaper and its publishers.
We do not therefore expect you to articulate publicly your sympathy with Lalith or your personal views about the unethical decisions made by the management, that cannot be legally or morally justified. We did however expect that as a respected media rights activist you would stay true to the principles of truth, justice and fairplay and that having witnessed the treatment meted out to Lalith, (who worked with you, long before he worked with any of us, as you pointed out to us that day in your office), you could at the very least allow others to take up his cause, even if you were personally prohibited from doing so.
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We did not expect you to stand up on our behalf: we just did not expect you to stand in the way of justice.
We wish for you and the new editorial management of Ceylon Today the strength to resist challenges to your independence in the future and assure you that if and when you need solidarity and support, we will stand strong beside you, even though you have determined that at this juncture, you cannot do the same for Lalith.
Rasika, Dharisha, Dinidu and Willie |
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