Monday, April 09, 2012

Holiday news reporting

The differences between the MSM in Australia and overseas are at times sadly obvious with this story picked up from a news wire two days after the story ran in Sri Lanka about the 42 y/o Australian activist's abduction.

Reporter Udul Premarathne's story - chockablock with detail - cites there were 29 abductions in the last two months similar in nature to allegations in the case of the missing Australian, & 56 abductions since December.

Meanwhile...more or less oblivious to our own culture of censorship by spin and poor industry conditions, Aussie journalists pressed on stoically, amid redundancies and dwindling staff numbers, digging deep for bland "breaking Easter news" covers about IVF babies, car crashes and flower shows.

Sri Lankan police said that they did not conduct a raid targeting him and that they had no record Gunaratnam ever entered the country.

In the story Premakumar Gunaratnam's contacts said he diligently reported his locations everyday, as well as any changes to his mobile phone number, due to his concerns that secret police posed a serious threat to activist safety.

Gunaratnam's wife alleged he was kidnapped by two dozen men, who also vandalized his home and car during the attack.

The accusations that follow the Columbo Telly story seem no less inflammatory than those endured in Australia's online MSM, & spell out an argument for better control of reader comment.

##So the missing man is returning to Australia - reported today(thanks for the heads-up). The Hindu added some interesting complexity into the he-said she-said argy bargy. The Columbo Times said the other head of that group who disappeared at the same time has also been freed. In contrast, Agency France Presse claimed in the wake of the abduction of the two people, that the Australian activist was a "radical" who outstayed his visa by five months - no mention of that in India or Sri Lanka, though, interestingly.