By Kumara Kaluarachchi © http://www.lankajournal.org
They come in hundreds to Lipton circus or Fort Railway station, armed with megaphones, placards and banners. They shout and jump up and down. They take their won photos and video record their own antics. After that all of them go to a nearest bar to discuss their days work. Then they go home. The officials of the Free Media Movement, how organized the whole fiasco may “retire” to five start hotels and embassies to meet their foreign handlers and pay masters to receive the balance of payments due to them. That is what an average media man does these days in Sri Lanka.
Most of them do not write or contribute to any media other than writing placards and jumping up and down in demonstrations. However one time of their lives, they have had worked in a newspaper, a radio station or a television studio. That qualification is enough to get the life membership and earn a better life by “electing” in to offices of Free Media Movement and other media watch dogs!
Naturally, the chaps who are currently working for Sri Lankan media (for a measly sum of course) are not happy. They know their ex-colleagues in Free Media Movement sell them to foreigners for Dollars and Euros. That’s why they have put up another organization “Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association”!!! However when it come to protests and demonstrations, they forget their differences as the “interested parties” are sponsoring some of the notable personalities in the association.
If you examine carefully, you will understand that the education standards of our media people are not that high. Most people in Sri Lanka believe that the only job available for an under-educated person is being a politician. I beg to differ. Having gone through the educational qualifications of the media chaps in Sri Lanka, I think that there are two jobs available for an under-educated but highly ambitious person. They start their career as media people and end that as non other than POLITICIANS, very people they criticize day and night!!!
