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In February 2014, Channel 4 and Callum Macrae published The Uncorrupted Truth, their response to Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka, Engage Sri Lanka’s critique of Channel 4’s misreporting on Sri Lanka.1 To quote Queen Gertrude in Hamlet, act 3, scene 2, Channel 4 perhaps “doth protest too much”.
In the continuing controversy over Channel 4’s deeply questionable programs on the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, Channel 4 is absolutely right in one thing. It has described its response to legitimate, carefully-presented criticism of the appalling journalism displayed in the programs as “unprecedented”.
“Unprecedented” response
Channel 4’s response has indeed been “unprecedented”. It is very unusual to see a first-world broadcaster such as Channel 4 so discomfited and upset and even pleading poverty when confronted with a series of simple questions about its journalism.
Channel 4’s response going back to Engage Sri Lanka’s initial OFCOM complaint about its second program in 2012, then to Engage Sri Lanka’s release at the November 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo of its study, Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka, questioning the programs, through to Channel 4’s counter-publication, The Uncorrupted Truth, in February 2014 has been the journalistic equivalent of a chicken running around without a head.
Some background to the issue might be useful. Engage Sri Lanka placed a detailed complaint before the British media regulator OFCOM about a March 2012 Channel 4 program, “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished”, which made a number of very serious allegations about events during the last few months of the conflict in Sri Lanka in 2009 between the Government of Sri Lanka and the “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam” (LTTE, also known as the “Tamil Tigers”) The program essentially repeated several claims made in a previous Channel 4 program, “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields”, broadcast in June 2011. The allegations made were deeply questionable where not simply false.
OFCOM complaint
Channel 4’s response to our OFCOM complaint was extraordinary. OFCOM stated that Channel 4 raised concerns regarding the cost and burden placed upon it to respond to the complaint. That is to say a company generating a billion pounds of revenue employing 800 people couldn’t afford the cost of responding to a legitimate complaint. Channel 4 then stated that to have to respond to the complaint posed a “serious threat to the future of...current affairs television” and had the potential to be “highly chilling of free expression”. All this because of a single complaint.
OFCOM’s ruling on the complaint, which was not to uphold it, was perverse to say the least in that they admitted not pressing Channel 4 on the issues raised by Engage Sri Lanka and which they would not have been able to answer:
It is not OFCOM’s intention to place a disproportionate burden on broadcasters by asking them to comment in unnecessary detail on very lengthy complaints, especially when there is a risk that by doing so the broadcaster might be discouraged from producing controversial programs. It is essential that broadcasters have the editorial freedom to make challenging programs without undue interference with their, and the audience’s, right to freedom of expression.
Perhaps OFCOM took Channel 4’s claims of being very poor at face value. Incredibly, given that the complaint detailed blatant factual inaccuracies in the claims made by Channel 4, OFCOM then also decided that Channel 4 did not have to treat the subject matter with “due accuracy”:
While all subjects in news programs must be presented with due impartiality and reported with due accuracy, in other non-news programs there is no requirement in the Code for issues to be treated with due accuracy.
It would be hard to find a more unreasonable adjudication. OFCOM was of course very reluctant to criticise a well-established broadcaster as Channel 4. It is clear that the relationship between the regulator and Channel 4 is very incestuous. Channel 4 News’ anchorman Jon Snow, for example, had gushingly praised OFCOM only a few weeks before the complaint at the annual Hugh Cudlipp lecture in London. For whatever reason, OFCOM simply did not deal with glaring examples of Channel 4’s deeply questionable journalism. The Leveson Inquiry into “the culture, practices and ethics of the press”, including “the relationship between the press and the public”, should perhaps be extended to examine a continuing failure in media regulation.
Broader implications
The broader implications of the OFCOM decision extend beyond Sri Lanka. Certain British media would appear to have a carte blanche to distort and misinform perceptions of events within the developing world without the need to be accurate in their claims.
Channel 4’s response to the OFCOM complaint, nonetheless, provided a clear insight into its mindset. Like all spoilt and arrogant, middle-class European crusaders they hate any criticism. One cannot help invoking the much-loved British sitcom Dad’s Army and Corporal Jones’ catchphrase, “They don’t like it up ‘em!” As with all bullies, they hate being challenged.
This then brings us to Channel 4’s response to the publication of Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka in November 2013. Corrupted Journalism was a 222-page critique of Channel 4’s claims regarding Sri Lanka. Its argument that Channel 4’s reporting on Sri Lanka was abysmal was supported by 625 detailed footnotes.
Channel 4’s self-proclaimed triumphant return to Colombo on David Cameron’s coat tails, during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in November 2013, was marred by the wide distribution both digitally and in hard copy of Corrupted Journalism in Sri Lanka and internationally. Panic ensued amongst Channel 4 journalists. They phoned home. Channel 4’s editor, Ben de Pear, was tasked with responding to the book. The trouble was that he was still back in Britain in the midst of a power-cut at home.
Channel 4 journalism at its best
What then followed was amazing by any yardstick and is probably not recommended by any decent journalism school, media studies department or A Level journalism teacher. Despite admitting he had not actually seen Corrupted Journalism, “I do not have this weighty tome in my hands,” he nonetheless produced a 1,737 word rebuttal of the book!
He stated that he wrote the rebuttal on what he “guessed” might be in it. Channel 4 journalism at its best! A micro example of the bigger, systemic malaise within Channel 4. Much of Channel 4’s “reporting” on Sri Lanka has self-evidently similarly been little more than malignant guesswork masquerading as journalism.
Ben de Pear then placed his rebuttal on the Channel 4 website and tweeted that he had done so. This compounded their problem. A helpful Channel 4 website person had by then added both a copy of the cover of Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka as well as the website address for the online, free-to-download, edition of the book. Channel 4’s tweet was then eventually retweeted to over 2 million recipients. The hits on the Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka website went through the roof.
Having inadvertently helped launch Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka for Engage Sri Lanka and greatly assisted with its international distribution and readership, Channel 4 was then undoubtedly questioned by many of the recipients, some of them real journalists. Panicked once again, Channel 4 and Callum Macrae then rushed through with the publication in February 2014 of The Uncorrupted Truth to refute what it termed a “Sri Lankan ‘propaganda offensive’”.
Attempt at self-justification
Given that Channel 4 and Macrae have described Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka variously as “nonsense” and “spurious”, the first question that begs an answer is if it indeed was spurious nonsense then why were they sufficiently spooked by it to rush into print with a 20,000 word attempt at self-justification? At least part of the answer can be arrived at by the fact that Macrae presents as being very insecure professionally. Both Channel 4’s press release and Macrae’s The Uncorrupted Truth go to great lengths to list Macrae’s accomplishments. The only thing missing was how many A levels he managed to get while at school and when he passed his driving test.
While this Channel 4 response to Corrupted Journalism had the distinct advantage on this occasion of having been written after someone at Channel 4 had actually read the book, it was nonetheless similarly lacklustre. It was an all too obvious attempt to misrepresent the crystal clear case of journalist incompetence outlined in Corrupted Journalism. We stand by every last word in our study.
Most of The Uncorrupted Truth is made up of attempts to undermine relevant quotations by observers, either cited by the international community or Channel 4 itself as otherwise reliable, that destroyed the claims made by Channel 4 about Sri Lanka by pointing to other things they may have also said. While this may have kept a few Channel 4 interns busy for a few weeks, it does not take away from the fact that very credible, on-the-spot commentators such as the University Teachers for Human Rights in Sri Lanka and Channel 4’s own star witness, Gordon Weiss, produced testimony that flatly contradicted Channel 4’s storyline about murderous Government soldiers running riot in May 2009. The University Teachers for Human Rights, an internationally respected human rights group, observed:
From what has happened we cannot say that the purpose of bombing or shelling by the Government forces was to kill civilians...ground troops took care not to harm civilians...It is hard to identify any other Army that would have endured the provocations of the LTTE, which was angling for genocide, and caused proportionately little harm.2
Channel 4’s favourite, hand-picked expert Weiss similarly declared that: It remains a credit to many of the front-line SLA soldiers that...they so often seem to have made the effort to draw civilians out from the morass of fighting ahead of them in an attempt to save lives.3
The sworn statement by Dr. Veerakathipillai Shanmugarajah, one of the incredibly courageous Tamil doctors who remained with the thousands of civilians used by the LTTE as a human shield in 2009, which appears as Appendix 2 in Corrupted Journalism, contradicts every claim made by Channel 4. A Tamil doctor who was there at the time unlike any of the European cappuccino journalists trying to shape and distort the story to their own ends years after the event.
No amount of wriggling and obfuscation by Channel 4 and rubbishing of Tamils with first-hand experience contradicting its claims can sidestep those sorts of statements and dozens more like them. They kill the narrative peddled by Channel 4 and Macrae stone dead.
Most interesting aspect
The most interesting aspect of Channel 4 and Macrae’s The Uncorrupted Truth is what they pointedly chose not to address in their “rebuttal”. The single most important issue in all of Channel 4’s claims is that 40,000 civilians were deliberately killed by the Sri Lankan soldiers. This falsehood is at the heart of the matter.
Given all the propaganda surrounding the mortality claims, Corrupted Journalism addressed this issue in an objectively scientific manner by way of a seminal British Medical Journal study which very clearly pointed out that in every armed conflict involving civilians there is a death-to-injury ratio of between 1:2-1:13, that is to say that for every civilian killed when caught up in the sort of fighting in Sri Lanka in 2009, between two and 13 others would be wounded. It is accepted that about 290,000 civilians emerged from the Vanni at the end of the war. Channel 4’s claim that 40,000 civilians had been killed by Government forces would mean that between 80,000 and 520,000 other civilians would have been wounded.
If one assumes a far more realistic median figure of five injured civilians to every fatality in the British Medical Journal model, the number of wounded that would be associated with Channel 4’s mortality claim would come to 200,000. That is to say to accept Channel 4’s mortality claim would mean that virtually everyone coming out of the combat zone would either be dead or wounded.
The reality is that UN and Weiss confirmed that between 15-20,000 civilians were wounded, a ratio that correlates with Sri Lanka Government and earlier UN claims regarding mortality. Channel 4 and Macrae decided not to address the hard science preferring instead to fall back on wind and water and journalistic hocus-pocus.
Interestingly enough, Sri Lanka was not alone in rejecting the attempts by middle-class European media luvvies to rewrite the history of emergent countries. The world’s largest democracy banned Channel 4’s Macrae-directed No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka. It was also banned in Malaysia and Nepal. India additionally banned Macrae from India. Prior to its publication, Engage Sri Lanka was asked by Callum Macrae to comment on several of the points he was to raise in The Uncorrupted Truth. Unsurprisingly perhaps, in the event he decided not to include any of them. These were some of the questions and our responses.
Engage Sri Lanka
Who are Engage Sri Lanka? We were established to make the case for the United Kingdom engaging more closely with Sri Lanka. Part of that function has been to try to hold international media coverage of Sri Lanka to universally accepted journalistic standards of accuracy and impartiality and, where necessary, to request a right to reply. (This has of course proved to be difficult where media regulators such as OFCOM excuse broadcasters such as Channel 4 from any requirement for accuracy in their Sri Lanka programming.)
To this end Engage Sri Lanka produced Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka, a study of Channel 4’s questionable coverage of Sri Lankan issues. As Channel 4 correctly pointed out Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka was published as a collective work by Engage Sri Lanka. Channel 4 and Macrae make much of the fact that the authors of the book and the sponsors of Engage Sri Lanka have chosen to remain anonymous. The reason for anonymity is very clear.
The study is very critical of both the “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam” (LTTE or “Tamil Tigers”) and Channel 4. As Channel 4 will know the LTTE has a reputation for being a ruthless terrorist organisation. Thirty-two countries list it as a terrorist organisation. In 2006, the United Kingdom listed the LTTE as a proscribed terrorist group under the Terrorism Act 2000. The European Union listed the LTTE as a terrorist organisation on 17 May 2006.
The United States designated the LTTE as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in October 1997: it was named as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist movement” on 2 November 2001. It subsequently described the LTTE as the “most dangerous and deadly extremist” terrorist movement in the world.
While Channel 4 may be comfortable with those facts, given the LTTE’s viciousness and that there are large numbers of active and former members of the LTTE presently living in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the West, Engage Sri Lanka reluctantly decided that anonymity was the best option. We have a duty of care to our members of staff. Channel 4 asked about the backers of Engage Sri Lanka. We are an organisation funded by British businessmen. The same issues regarding anonymity apply to them. Channel 4 tries to link the veracity of Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka to its funding. We found this a somewhat puzzling argument. The validity of the book stands or falls on the intellectual integrity of the case it makes, and the 625 footnotes provided to support it. Conversely, the fact that Channel 4’s billion pound funding and who scripted, edited and produced its programs on Sri Lanka are in the public domain hasn’t prevented Channel 4 from producing some of the most professionally flawed journalism imaginable on Sri Lanka.
British Prime Minister’s comments
Channel 4 asked Engage Sri Lanka to comment on where the case made in Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka stands in relation to the British Prime Minister’s comments on Sri Lanka and the comments David Cameron made about No Fire Zone, the latest program broadcast by Channel 4 on Sri Lanka. Our comment is a simple one. Cameron’s boorish behaviour at last year’s CHOGM in Colombo starkly echoed that of David Miliband when, as British foreign secretary, he visited Sri Lanka in 2009 and made similar comments. Wikileaks later revealed that Tim Waite, the British Foreign Office team leader on Sri Lanka at the time, explained Miliband’s then focus on Sri Lanka “in terms of UK electoral geography”.
A US diplomatic cable noted: “Waite said that much of [Her Majesty’s Government] and ministerial attention to Sri Lanka is due to the ‘very vocal’ Tamil diaspora in the UK, numbering over 300,000...He said that with UK elections on the horizon and many Tamils living in Labour constituencies with slim majorities, the Government is paying particular attention to Sri Lanka.” Miliband’s visit had actually been to secure expatriate Tamil votes for the Labour party in Britain.
Cameron’s visit to and comments while in Sri Lanka were equally cynical, with an eye to exactly the same “UK electoral geography” in the lead-up to British elections in 2015. This selective approach to human rights on the part of David Cameron was then highlighted by his behaviour in China, a few days after his visit to Colombo, for which he was criticised from across the political spectrum. Pro-conservative newspapers in Britain highlighted his hypocrisy. Daily Telegraph headlines said it all: “David Cameron says he won’t ‘lecture’ China on human rights” (Daily Telegraph, 9 November 2010) and “PM avoids public clash over human rights during first day of Far East trip despite British journalist being barred from a press conference” (Daily Telegraph, 2 December 2013). A Daily Mirror headline read “David Cameron accused of selective human rights principles as he WON’T raise Tibet during China visit next week” (Daily Mirror, 30 November 2014).
Given Cameron’s double standards it is equally cynical and selective of Channel 4 to then hold his comments up as some sort of a human right litmus test. Any comments Cameron may have made about No Fire Zone would have been equally self-serving. Cameron’s all too transparent selectivity is second only to that of Channel 4 and Macrae.
It is also a matter of fact that Sri Lanka’s Tamil cricketing legend Muttiah Muralitharan told Channel 4’s Jon Snow to his face in no uncertain terms that David Cameron was “misled” over the claims being made about Sri Lanka and its Tamil community.4 If such a prominent Tamil, actually living and working in his community, believes that Cameron was misled, then it goes without saying that it was Channel 4 that misled him.
Opportunistic, advocacy-driven, European journalists who at the time were living and working in comfort thousands of miles away from the scene still think they know better than Tamil doctors and human rights activists who were actually present in the war zone at the time. Such is the conceit of Channel 4.
The British Prime Minister did say that there are questions that need answers with regard to Sri Lanka. Our study, Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka, sought to set out several of those questions – especially with regard to twisted advocacy journalism of the sort produced by Channel 4 on Sri Lanka. Channel 4’s The Uncorrupted Truth provided none of the answers. It was little more than an unsuccessful attempt to muddy the waters.
Footnotes
1 Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka , Engage Sri Lanka, London, 2012, available at
<www.corruptedjournalism.com>.
2 Special Report No. 32, University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), Sri Lanka, 10 June 2009, available at <http://www.uthr.org/SpecialReports/spreport32.htm#_ftn7>.
3 Gordon Weiss, The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers, The Bodley Head, London, 2011, p. 217.
4 “Sri Lanka icon Murali - ‘Cameron has been misled’ - video”, Channel 4, 16 November 2013.
