Virus-hit messenger

The COVID-19 outbreak in a country without media would have been unimaginable for any expert. It would have been hellish. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions would have been died in Sri Lanka alone. 
It was the media that enlightened Sri Lanka in January last year about the spread of an unprecedented infectious disease in several other countries, helped authorities educate the masses through their daily briefings as to how to minimize the spread of the new disease in Sri Lanka, informed the people that the threat has encroached the country and is gradually snowballing the number of victims and pointed out to the authorities the deficiencies in their remedial measures. The process is ongoing.

This progressive role of the media is common in respect of any disaster, despite the hardships -- sometimes unimaginable – it has had to face. During the height of the separatist war, when the LTTE was a formidable force in the North, the supply of newsprint, batteries, radios and TV sets had been stopped from being sent to the region. The Tamil language Udayan Newspaper, the media institution that underwent the worst kind of suppression in Sri Lankan history, had to be printed in “brown paper” with limited pages. 

"Knowing well that the fully blurred visuals do not make sense in their news bulletins, they telecast partly blurred houses and victims, who could be identified even by those living outside the area, if the victims were known to them before"

At a meeting in Jaffna during the peace talks between the LTTE and the UNF government in 2002, the then Jaffna District Secretary said it was Udayan that was left as the only communicator between the State and the northern people during that difficult period. In the absence of its contribution, he said thousands would have perished for want of food and being caught in crossfires.

Unfortunately, media at times also plays a negative role as well. The Daily Mirror on Tuesday had editorially discussed one of the aspects that were evident during the current coronavirus pandemic. Health officials accompany media personnel when they go out for contact tracing or take infected people to hospitals and contact persons to quarantine centers. While advising the masses on the one-metre physical distancing between each other, including among infected people, these officials during their mission give advice to the patients and contact persons standing ten or fifteen metres away from the victims’ houses, as if the virus could be airborne, while the TV cameras are focused on them. This is the beginning of the stigmatization of COVID-19 victims.

Media, as it currently does, has to report this, no doubt, but it never questions the irrationality of this stigmatizing behavior of the officials. The embarrassment suffered by the patient or the contact persons and their families during such incidents is visibly written on their faces. Sometimes the officials treat them like policemen questioning suspects. On top of this, they paste a notice on the wall or the gate of the patient’s or the contact person’s house, though it is justifiable and inevitable. Making matters worse the embarrassment suffered by the victims are shown on TV, without questioning. The entire scene is stigmatizing to the victims of the virus in spite of the same health officials advising the masses not to stigmatize those who fall victim to the pandemic. 

"Despite the rhetorical statements on the efficiency of Dhammika Bandara’s ‘Paniya’ and his claims on being possessed by Kali, the Hindu goddess, one can justifiably believe that the medicine might have the capacity to control the virus"

The media completes this stigmatizing process sometimes creatively and sometimes in a malicious manner. Knowing well that the fully blurred visuals do not make sense in their news bulletins, they telecast partly blurred houses and victims, who could be identified even by those living outside the area, if the victims were known to them before. Sometimes the personal biases and personal issues between certain correspondents and people of certain localities worsen the situation. This media behavior compelled former Army Commander Mahesh Senanayake to prevent media personnel from accompanying the army when they went on an operation, subsequent to the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks, as the Daily Mirror editorial said.

A tense situation prevails in the country now over the demand by Muslims to sanction the burial of people who die of COVID 19. Any uneducated person has the right to make such a demand, but it is only the experts, in the relevant field, who to decide on it. However, the media has become a platform to “anybody” to express his or her views, leading to virulent communal disputes. The government has also failed to seek the opinion of the “most relevant” experts initially thus making the situation more complicated.

The controversy over the now famous “Dhammika Paniya” or the syrup that has been developed by Dhammika Bandara of Hettimulla, Kegalla to fight coronavirus is purely the handiwork of the media. Indigenous medicine is not something that has to be despised of, as some Western medical practitioners do. The indigenous medical practitioners in some cases outshine their Western counterparts. There have been such amazing instances with the Weda Mahattayas or the indigenous doctors being the main source of medical care in rural areas of this country until the 1960s. 

Despite the rhetorical statements on the efficiency of Dhammika Bandara’s ‘Paniya’ and his claims on being possessed by Kali, the Hindu goddess, one can justifiably believe that the medicine might have the capacity to control the virus. Any action by the authorities to test the efficacy of the potion, without creating a fuss is also justifiable, if at least to find out its merits. 

However, it was the media with the support of certain politicians who had brought ‘Dhammika Paniya’ to the limelight with a competitive hype, before its efficacy is scientifically or at least empirically proven.  In fact, testing the efficacy of a medicine against COVID-19 by simply giving it to the patients seem to be a difficult exercise since the mortality rate of the disease is 0.47% in Sri Lanka while its global average is 2.2%, meaning a large majority of infected people do not show symptoms or recover just by containing  symptoms. If a person after being treated with a medicine is proved to be able to withstand any exposure to the virus, its efficacy has to be accepted. Are we going to risk exposing anyone to the virus just to test Bandara’s syrup?  

" It was the media with the support of certain politicians who had brought ‘Dhammika Paniya’ to the limelight with a competitive hype, before its efficacy is scientifically or at least empirically proven."

‘Dhammika Paniya’ advocates, with their stubborn media campaign were about to create a new COVID-19 cluster with people, even from far away places had thronged in their thousands on several days to Bandara’s residence in Hettimulla, ignoring the instructions issued by the Health Ministry in view of the pandemic.  However, timely intervention by the authorities averted any major catastrophe. The champions of the potion ignored the fact that this is a global phenomenon and any miscarriage of their partly State-sponsored campaign could result in Sri Lanka becoming a laughing stock, as happened in Madagascar where a State- sponsored medicine -- COVID- Organics (CVO) - distributed last April with fanfare pathetically failed later.

Sometimes, media resort to what is called in journalism “false balance” to justify their unethical campaigns by seeking opinions disproportionately from either side of a controversy. It is disheartening to hear prominent figures in certain media institutions audaciously boasting on open fora that they do not prefer to lose their freedom in the name of ethics in journalism.