A Letter to Lankan Journalists
To all Sri Lankan journalists,
Desktop-warrior journalism
Being a journalist in Sri Lanka is somewhat of a thankless job right now. the public disses you cos you don’t put out any anti establishment content and the establishment abuses you if you do.
But if you have controversial stories that need to get out there, putting it up on a blog (anonymously or otherwise) is a good way to get the message across. If you want to fight media oppression then here is an outlet.
The blogosphere isn’t as on the radar as mainstream journalism. Granted, it also doesnt have the same kind of mass exposure. But this way you’re doing your part by telling the public what they need to hear. You are contributing to a better democracy and doing the job of a good journalist.
Now you wont get paid, true. But stories that are time sensitive have only a small profit making time window anyway. So if you find you can’t publish full details due to censorship, here is a more productive option to simply filing information away.
And don’t worry. Tracing you won’t be that easy. You can use various tactics to cover your tracks if you want to. It’ s also very easy to start blogging. Just go to wordpress.com or blogger.com and open your account. And get yourself syndicated on aggregators like kottu.org and achcharu.org You can also blog in all three languages.
So please, give it a go. We need to know what they don’t want us to know!
Regards
Me
Abdul Khaleq 
you spelt achcharu wrong
corrected, thanks!
I wonder how long it will be before blogging is also monitored? Hopefully they’ll just ignore it as a bunch of rich geeks writing stuff no one bothers to read.
hmmm but the more effective it gets the more attention it’ll get. Leading to somewhat of a catch 22
@ Kill Romeo,
you don’t have to be rich nor have to be a geek to blog. You just need some good content. Unlike the no miracle paradise, WWW is DEMOCRATIC in every sense of the word.
@ Going global,
Pretty much agree with your suggestions except the “Can’t trace” part. By default everything on Internet can be traced. So there’s NO getting out. That said, i hope Journos out there get inspired by this post. Irony though, Blogging is widely used by Yellow Journalists in SL. For instance Sanjana aka Traitor Haththotuwa’s Gripeviews yellow journalism doesn’t depict the reality. Chitrangi uses her bog to sling mud. Cunning Indi Samarajiva uses it for self promotions while the guy doesn’t have any credentials of a Professional journalist. Then there is Dinidu De Alwis who went missing at http://www.dinidudealwis.com... My point is, use with responsibilty. I personally like Bailaman. Well Sitting nuts follows a Pro Lankan approach, but then, the guy is just nuts. Middle path with facts and real faces should be the way forward.
You’ve watched too many old sci-fi/internet movies.
you mean the kind where you have to pull out the power cord in the nick of time to avoid detection?
I mean the kind where every damn thing can be traced, no matter how impossible it is, practically.
@ Island Girl, you’ve obviously missed my point, what i meant was I hope the powers that be assume bloggers are ‘rich geeks’. As for the WWW being totally democratic, maybe you missed out on the Burmese blogger who was jailed for his blog content?
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you should look into Tor, the onion router, software to protect yourself while blogging.
…shit…:__D