Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake has appointed a Competent Authority for the State owned electronic media in response to a complaint from the Opposition that those media institutions are biased against the UNF-JVP presidential candidate. We do not question the Polls Chief’s authority, but interventions of this nature give rise to some questions.

First of all, let it be stated at the very outset that we are no great fans of the State media, lest this comment should be misconstrued. Similarly, we recognise anyone's right to be critical of us, the so-called independent or privately owned media.

If one accepts that it is in order for some State agency, in this instance the Elections Secretariat, to step in to monitor and goad, as it were, the State media on the grounds that the manner in which they disseminate information is detrimental to the interests of a particular politician/political party, then how can one justify one's opposition to such interventions by the State to effect media controls at times of far more serious exigencies? Successive governments have resorted to curbs on the media during the country's war on terror and they ran into stiff resistance––quite rightly so––from media rights activists. On those occasions, the State media were spared as they willingly toed the line of the military and practised self-censorship.

An argument is being peddled in some quarters that since the State media are maintained with public funds, it is all right for them to be controlled to ensure that the interests of all political forces hostile to the government in power are not adversely affected. They may have a point but what about the situations where the other media that are not maintained with public funds act in such a way that national security interests are threatened? During the country's war on terror, a section of the media, both electronic and print, carried out a propaganda campaign detrimental to the interests of the national military. A war is a far more serious affair than an election, as is obvious. Moreover, backing terrorism is illegal and amounts to a punishable offence. How can those who opposed the moves to control the media that disseminated information injurious to national security advocate similar measures against a section of the media, whose propaganda has, they claim, affected someone's political interests?

Is it only during elections that the government-controlled media should be 'balanced'? The Elections Commissioner cannot enforce 'balance' on the State media at other times when government propagandists enjoy the freedom of the wild ass. This has been the case right throughout under all political dispensations, though it does not mean that the tradition should continue. The only instance of the State media not going the whole hog to back the government's presidential candidate was in 2005, when the then President Chandrika Kumaratunga tried to engineer the downfall of her bête noire, Mahinda Rajapaksa in the presidential fray. She ordered that the State media give both main candidates, Ranil Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa equal publicity, having herself unashamedly abused the State media to ensure her re-election in 1999.

If the reason why the State media should be controlled is that the public pay for their maintenance, then such piecemeal remedies as have been tried so far won't do. The State must divest itself of the media it owns.

But, the question is whether any government wants to do that. The SLFP was at the receiving end of the Lake House propaganda before its takeover and thereafter the UNP cried foul for years until 1977, when it captured power. Then, instead of privatising Lake House, the UNP turned the tables on the SLFP by abusing that publishing house to harass its opponents. The SLFP continued to smart for 17 long years from scathing propaganda onslaughts by the State media, but when it formed a government in 1994, it did not want to sell them off. The UNP kept on crying blue murder about the abuse of the State media after its defeat in 1994 but did not want to privatise them when it came back to power in 2001.