Leaders and people of Sri Lanka cannot be content with the country having been ranked 135th among 180 countries in this year’s World Press Freedom index (WPFI) released by the Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF), one of the premier international organizations acting with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. 

The Index has been released every year since 2002 on the World Press Freedom Day which falls on May 3. RSF has been compiling and publishing it based upon the organization’s own assessment of the countries’ press freedom records in the previous year. According to latest assessment, Norway is ranked first for the seventh consecutive year and North Korea secured the last place in the index, as done last year.

Sri Lanka’s place in the index has been around the same for the past several years, indicating a threatened media landscape. It has been in the 126th place in 2019 and 127th in the next two years. It fell 19 places down to 146th rank last year and had a slight crawl back to 135th place this year. However, taking 135th position among 180 countries paints a bleak picture in terms of media freedom in the country on which the other types of freedom depend.

Sri Lankan media institutions and journalists have been physically attacked in the past. Many journalists such as Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickramatunga, Mailvaganam Nimalarajan, Darmaratnam Sivaram were killed, senior journalists Upali Thennakoon and Keith Noyahr were attacked, some disappeared, media institutions such as Sirasa and Udayan were set ablaze. Although journalists or media institutions have not been attacked in such a brutal way in recent times, the threat comes in a different way. 

For instance, when our sister paper Lankadeepa reported about a fraudulent transaction involving the State-owned Lanka SATHOSA in 2021, the criminal Investigation Department (CID) wanted to question the editor of the paper, instead of questioning the persons involved in the racket. Later it was prevented by the then Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, which also indicated the interference of politicians in matters relating to law and order, in spite of it was welcomed by the media. 

On the other hand, despite the successive regime changes and journalists having agitating throughout the past two decades, justice has not been meted out to the journalists and media institutions that were attacked. 
The RSF ranking is not based only on direct violence against media institutions and journalists. The WPFI is partly based on a questionnaire using seven general criteria: pluralism (measures the degree of representation of opinions in the media space), media independence, environment and self-censorship, legislative framework, transparency, infrastructure, and abuses. The data on the degree of media freedom in various countries is collected through various organizations linked to the RFS across the world using the questionnaire.

The pluralism in media or representation of various/conflicting opinions indicates the independence from prejudice and thereby matters to media freedom. It mainly depends on the ethical standards of the journalists and the media concerned. However, in a politicized atmosphere maintaining pluralism would be very difficult. Lack of training also becomes a hindrance. 

Sri Lanka had earlier a draconian criminal defamation law under which Editors of several leading newspapers such as the Sunday Times and the now-defunct Lakbima were prosecuted. Widening the independence of media, it was abrogated in two decades ago. Also, Right to Information (RTI) was made a constitutional right through the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 2015 and a Right to Information Act was also adopted, under which the RTI Commission was established. Two earlier attempts to legalize the RTI was thwarted by the Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa before 2015. 

Although the credit for the abrogation of Criminal Defamation Act, inserting the people’s tight to information into the Constitution and bringing in a mechanism to protect that right should go to the United National Party (UNP), under whose administration the relevant pieces of legislations were introduced, however, the party tarnished its own image in 2018, when it presented the Counter Terrorism Bill (CTB), if enacted freedom of expression could have become an offence of terrorism. 

Yet, media in Sri Lanka is faced with the same threat as the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill (ATB) contains the same provisions. According to the definition of terrorism in the proposed law, agitations to pressurize the government to do or not to do something would amount to an offence of terrorism and encouraging such an offence by any publication too would have the same effect. If adopted, the law might land Sri Lanka somewhere below or close to North Korea in the World Press Freedom Index, in the coming year.