Charting Tamilnet’s Influence on International Media Reporting

- Cenan Pirani

The Tamilnet website meets all the immediate criteria of a legitimate online news source. The menus, pictures, and headlines are aesthetically pleasing, well placed, and easy to navigate through. The content of the articles is presented in a seemingly impartial, reporting tone -- the stories give the reader the traditional who-what-where-why of journalism without too many incendiary or partisan statements that would explicitly identify its political position. A sense of professionalism seems to permeate through the whole journalistic project.

For the neophyte Sri Lankan political enthusiast, the Tamilnet website might appear to be a useful and credible source.  But reporters representing international news agencies see Tamilnet in a completely different light. These reporters speak of Tamilnet’s politically charged reporting and analysis, which, they claim, artfully promotes a Tamil nationalist ideology. Regardless, the site continues to enjoy a high rate of hits, which underscores its usefulness to some degree. After all, Tamilnet is the only news agency (partisan or otherwise) that consistently reports from the ground of the North and East. Tamilnet even has a special appeal for those critical of it -- it reveals the extreme Tamil nationalist position on various issues. In effect, its diverse appeal causes an interesting phenomenon; it places its viewpoints on issues, as well as issues it focuses on, at the center of discursive media debates.

Debunking Tamilnet’s claim to credibility is not central to my argument in this article, but it is something I come to along the way. I am more interested in how legitimate online international media outlets use Tamilnet to understand the political situation in Sri Lanka. I argue that these outlets, however critical of Tamilnet’s nationalist agenda, still use Tamilnet’s content to form their knowledge base. This occurs amidst the rapid pace of the media world where reporters are pushed to quickly formulate and deliver stories that provide ‘the truth’ of the situation -- hinging reporting on previously written reports as well as public interests and views gathered directly.

Muslim Extremism in the East

Muslim extremism is a popular subject of reporting in all international media today. Such reporting has helped to propagate the now tacitly held idea that within the Islamic faith one can transcend all rationality to commit acts of violence. Tamilnet reporting for some time has been transmitting this idea to a Sri Lankan audience. It has claimed Islamic extremism, embodied by mostly impressionable Eastern Muslim youths influenced by the growing tide of global fundamentalism, is further threatening the already fragile peace. All claims and assumptions in these reports bode well with the dominant viewpoints of Islamic fundamentalism today. As a result, discourses on Muslim extremism, reshaped by Tamilnet to fit the context of Sri Lanka, are easily taken up by more reputable online news agencies. These agencies might not swallow fully all Tamilnet views, but certain themes pervade.

An eruption of Muslim extremism in the East is attributed to the “Osama Group” in 2002 Tamilnet reports. In the latter part of June, Tamilnet covered tensions between Muslims and Tamils in the Trincomalee district town of Muttur. Tamilnet highlighted an attack on the town LTTE office by alleged Islamic extremists. In particular, Tamilnet cites LTTE and local authority’s accounts that the perpetrators of the crime belonged to a group identified as the “Osama section of the Jihad group” -- what Tamilnet notes as a violent and erratic group of Eastern Muslim youths. [i] A report issued in the same week has this group attacking Tamil journalists and “rampaging” Tamil properties with no apparent impetus. [ii] The irrational nature of these insurgents is reiterated when Tamilnet documented a case in Valaichchenai where an extremist group of Muslim youths attacked a Muslim government employee. [iii] The veracity of these claims is canonized in Tamilnet reports with quotes from Rauf Hakeem of the SLMC, whom also attributed the tensions to “sinister elements” in the Muslim community. [iv]

References to Muslim extremism seep into an Associated Press report that otherwise attempted to detail tensions in the East. The Valaichchenai ground report titled, “Island’s Muslim Minority Looking Toward Militancy to Counter Tamil’s Growing Power,” is different than any Tamilnet report in that it sets some impetus for Muslim militancy. [v] But it reuses the discourse of irrational violence found in previous Tamilnet reports. In one section, it notes the tendency by Islamic extremists to be motivated by arresting anger. It cites a police intelligence report that documented activities at two Islamic militant bases in Valaichchenai, “The report says there has not yet been any serious weapons training at the bases, saying the emphasis now is on raising the anger level of Muslims and mentally prepare themselves for ‘Jehad’ or holy war.”

Uncontrollable anger is a theme that is carried in other parts of the report. The Associated Press reporter frames a quote by Hasan Ali, SLMC Secretary General, “In Colombo, the leader of a key Muslim political party said he opposes violence but worries about young Muslims resorting to force if Muslims are made to live in a Tamil-governed area. ‘We are aware of the risk. That is the reason we want to use all our means to convince the government that it should never sacrifice the interest of the Muslims.’” In this piece, pleading to the government to strengthen the rights of Muslims appears to actually be centered on preventing the incitement of potentially volatile youths instead of uplifting the community on general principle.

I am not arguing with the suggestion that Muslim communities can act violently. Events that continue to take place and have taken place in the past (one might even note the Home Guards of the late 80s early 90s that were prompted by the government to disrupt Eastern Tamil communities) prove that Muslims, as a self-identified community, can act violently toward individuals as well as groups of people. Instead, my criticism centers on the media’s use of the discourse of Muslim extremism. Tamilnet reports use this discourse to delineate and label a sector of the eastern Muslims as erratic and violent, which inculpates them as the inciters of tension between the Tamil and Muslim communities. Associated Press reports, different in that they provide impetus, still use the discourse to find a transcendental point when the average Muslim becomes a fanatic, which is reached in the act of violence.

Paramilitaries and Recently Recognized Assassinations

The 2002 Cease Fire Agreement contains some of the first official language on paramilitaries in Sri Lanka. Article 1.8 states: “Tamil paramilitary groups shall be disarmed by the GOSL by D-day + 30 days at the latest. The GOSL shall offer to integrate individuals in these units under the command and disciplinary structure of the GOSL armed forces for service away from the Northern and Eastern Province.” [vi] However vague about the identity of paramilitaries, the CFA language has, regardless, served to place paramilitaries into the conscious minds of reporters and politicians. For example, recently, Tamilnet attributed the assassinations of two individuals in the last year, E. Kaushalyan and Dharmaretnam Sivaram, to paramilitary groups. Interestingly enough, the reports focused less on identifying the parties that colluded with the government and more on proving the government was involved. The claims captured the attention of the more reputable online news agency, the BBC World News English service. Within the span of a few months, the time between the two assassinations, Tamilnet viewpoints and information gained an increased prominence in BBC reporting.

Tamilnet intensified efforts to identify paramilitaries affiliated with the government after the killing of E. Kaushalyan, the LTTE political head for the Batticaloa/Ampara district. The killing, which occurred on February 7^th 2005, received broad international attention, unlike many previous political killings. Within days, Tamilnet launched a series of reports pointing to paramilitary operatives working in collusion with the government. On the day of the killing, Tamilnet, following a more objective method of reporting, reported that the LTTE were the ones to claim government-aided paramilitaries committed the assassination. But, the following day’s story removed the LTTE from the equation and stated the perpetrators were, “gunmen suspected to be working with the Sri Lankan Army.” [vii] Reporting the next day on the issue consisted of speech excerpts and statements made by Tamil National Alliance parliamentarians. All statements placed the government at direct fault for the killing. One rationalized government involvement by pointing to the fact Kaushalyan was killed in a highly fortified army zone. [viii] The Tamilnet reports are unclear about the exact identity of these paramilitary operatives, though many in the international media of course pointed to the breakaway rebel Eastern faction lead by Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, aka Karuna. Ultimately, within two days, it was clear what Tamilnet wanted the public to think; the government was largely responsible for the killing.

The BBC’s coverage of the Kaushalyan killing never fully implicated the government like Tamilnet, but government rebuttals were given less prominence. A day after the killing the BBC issued its first report citing the LTTE paramilitaries claim. It also reported that the Sri Lankan authorities denied the charges and pointed to the Karuna faction as the sole perpetrator -- something that was not found in Tamilnet reporting. [ix] However, the BBC downplayed contesting views over government involvement in reports issued a week later. One report, “Call to Disarm Sri Lanka Militias,” focused on Anton Balasingham’s meeting with the Norwegian peace envoy, briefly mentioned government disavowal of the charges. But the title and the rest of the article, which cites Balasingham’s speech from Tamilnet in detail, severely marginalized the claim. [x]

By the time of the killing of the Tamil journalist, Dharmaretnam Sivaram, a senior editor of the Tamilnet website, BBC reporting ceased to document a government response to allegations. In a report issued on April 28^th, the confirmed date of his death, the BBC cited the LTTE claim, which blamed Sri Lankan military intelligence and paramilitary groups for the killing. However, unlike the Kaushalyan reports, no response by the government was noted. Instead the BBC provided a long analysis of Sivaram’s life borrowed from the Tamilnet website. [xi] Sentiments are matched in an article released on the BBC website on the same day called, “Murdered Editor Champion of Tamil Cause,” written by Thirumalai Manivannan, an author who normally writes for the BBC Tamil Service. [xii]

The BBC took up the viewpoints of Tamilnet in the span of the two killings. Whether the BBC is right or wrong in assuming the government was involved is not what is being argued. It is that the BBC has taken the viewpoint of Tamilnet and marginalized responses that conflict it. This is done in spite of the fact that Tamilnet has a vested interest in the outcome -- Tamilnet’s legitimacy and Tamil nationalist political capital in general will strengthen if the government is found responsible. [xiii]

Conclusion

Tamilnet proves to be a useful source of knowledge for many reputable online news agencies. In the two cases detailed above, these news agencies took actual content as well as discursive themes from Tamilnet reporting. These agencies might have approached the information on Tamilnet with some trepidation, however, they were still compelled to integrate it into their own reporting due to lack of other sufficient reporting of the ground situation in Sri Lanka. News agencies like the BBC and Associated Press could rationalize their usage of Tamilnet information by claiming they possess the ability to extract the facts from the incendiary fiction with specialized reporting mechanisms. However, this piece proves that these refined facts are essentially based on Tamilnet’s presupposed concepts, thus blurring the line between fact and spin.

The main point of this piece was to question the process of media fact making. The veracity of reporting formulated by those news sources that the public deems credible is often highly questionable. One just has to turn on the television or look on the Internet to see the manner in which they cover particular hotbed issues.  We have seen how coverage of the US/Iraq war brings new twisted meaning to terms like journalistic integrity and media truth. Most reports clearly reflect a partisan position and are conveyed in language that is discursively dense (ie. terrorism, freedom, democracy). In a sense, Tamilnet reporting does nothing different. Given this one might ask: if Tamilnet is no different than any other major news group, why does this piece’s critical focus fall on Tamilnet. Why single it out?  Why not choose any other media agency on which to level such a critique?

The intriguing thing about Tamilnet is that, as I mentioned before, credible news agencies are constantly pointing out its partisan nature and yet making ample use of it’s reporting. Why? For a partisan news agency Tamilnet presents information in a very similar manner to those whom level the charge.  Their reporting is timely, presented in an impartial reporting tone on a pristine and organized website, all utterly convenient for journalists on tight deadlines!