An unfulfilled Broken Promise?
During a visit after many years, I was thrilled to see lively political debates on TV. It was refreshing to see ministers taken to task in European style. Gone, as it were, the days politicians could hide behind impersonal gazette notifications, to avoid facing the public. TV in Sri Lanka, was, after all, providing a mature service to the public, rather than solely engaged in shoving cheap American imports down a seemingly gullible audience.
Newspapers also seemed to have advanced beyond publication of Government statements and tame "editorials". Well, it must be said that the society at the time was also politically "tame" too.
There was, and still is it seems, a group performing the service of the Government mouthpiece. Be it that way, and everybody knows it and there is no harm in that, I think.
Also there were the sections that were politically biased towards certain parties, and tend to embellish the news and comments suit the agendas of their patrons. So be it too. The readers know it, and they apply the usual filters to glean the information they seek.
More interesting are the dissenting press. Some seemingly politically neutral, and some overtly critical of everything that moves, apparently for the sake of it!
Media, like any other business, cannot survive on ideals alone. In these days of "product" jargon, they have to produce, package and deliver a product to meet a demand. Idealism can have its place, but not on balance sheets, unfortunately. There are wages to be paid, raw materials, rent, taxes (if you only make a profit, fortunately) and a thousand other expenses to meet, which have to be funded by the readership.
Can intellectualism rise above commercialism, and still survive?
What I see from another angle is the polarisation of the readership along political lines - a voluntary donning of blinkers. That is a reason to be sad.
With a literacy rate in excess of 90%, it is indeed a sad phenomenon to shut one's eyes to dissenting views.
After all, freedom is what it is.
Freedom to say and to hear.