Thursday, October 20, 2005
Flase alarm or scary trend? |
So who's heard the gossip about the LTTE issuing a dress code for the people of Jaffna? Here's about all I've been able to gather:
The story ends with:
So far the only source that I have been able to find online for this story is Dawn's report on the 18th. No Sri Lankan media outlet has covered this story at all. And even the online ones have just ripped the story from Dawn without bothering to authenticate it. The Lanka Academic, LankaPage.com, LankaWeb, Infolanka and Go2Lanka all run this story based on what the Dawn says. They don't bother to check for authenticity either. Don't they know any people in Jaffna that they can call and check something like this with? I guess they don't.
History
I wouldn't find it hard to believe that this story is true considering how the LTTE have behaved with regard to such things in the past. They tried and failed to impose similar restrictions in Batticaloa last year. There it was mainly to do with the way the women dressed.
They also stopped the transmission of (Maharaja Broadcasting Corporation's) Shakti FM in Jaffna because they didn't agree to the music that Shakti was playing. The said it was too loud and too fast and not appropriate. By this time they had appointed themselves the judges of Tamil culture. They had asked Shakti to discontinue broadcasts and when the station didn't back down their transmission was bombed. Of course the LTTE did not claim responsibility for this but there is little doubt that they were behind it.
They also banned the Tamil film 'Boys' in the region saying it was against Tamil culture. The movie which proved to be a semi-hit in South India is a story about five Tamil boys and their dreams and aspirations.
Misinformation
This last story about the dress code in Jaffna could be true, but it's annoying that all the people who're shouting about it don't seem to realise that the only source we have is a Pakistani newspaper. However respected the Dawn may be in Pakistan, it's not a Sri Lankan newspaper, and when they cover a story that a lot of Sri Lankan's haven't even heard of we have to be a little suspicious, and try to confirm the story for ourselves before we put it on our sites.
It's very easy to copy and paste a story from another source and call it news simply because the people you got it from calls it news. We saw something similar like this happen about 6 months ago when a journalist from the Times of India picked up a story from spoof.com and published it on the Times site as news. So it's a little silly to not really think about where you're getting your story from.
Maybe it's news. Maybe the Dawn correspondent is being duped. Maybe someone maliciously planted the story to create anti-LTTE sentiment. Whatever the authenticity of the story it's just plain stupid and unprofessional on the the part of the news-editors on these sited to republish this information without any confirmation.
Right now, the only thing that these online news sites (even the pseudointellectual Lanka Academic) are doing is spreading unverified rumors. Exactly the opposite of what they're supposed to be doing.
Sometimes dogs bark because other dogs are barking.
Note: I've just been on the phone with someone in Jaffna who didn't notice anything like this. He's out right now checking to see if anyone there's heard about this. Updates will come as soon as I have the information.
The growth of beard and long hair have been forbidden for young men.This came out in the Dawn, the Pakistani newspaper on the 18th. The online edition just says 'from our correspondent'. It doesn't give the correspondent's name so we could call them and check them for the authenticity of the story. Apparently 'sources in Jaffna' told the correspondent that the LTTE had imposed these restrictions. Even the Dawn correspondent didn't have direct confirmation of this story. He heard it from someone else.
For girls, close-fitting shirts and skirts have been banned along with the wearing of trousers. Instead girls have been asked to wear the Tamil costume of Shalwar Kameez.
The story ends with:
The dress directive was preceded by posters asking Tamils not to interact with members of the Sri Lankan military.I don't know about you guys, but I didn't hear about this in Colombo. Is this true? Wouldn't a story like this hit the front pages in Colombo? Even if no one was interested in the story wouldn't at least a rag like 'The Island' pick it up and bash the LTTE with it? Online, wouldn't our friend Indi snap it up and do on another LTTE bashing spree with it? But the funny thing is, no one heard about these things. There would have to be some serious breakdown in communication between Jaffna and the rest of the country for something like this to have happened without Colombo buzzing about it.
So far the only source that I have been able to find online for this story is Dawn's report on the 18th. No Sri Lankan media outlet has covered this story at all. And even the online ones have just ripped the story from Dawn without bothering to authenticate it. The Lanka Academic, LankaPage.com, LankaWeb, Infolanka and Go2Lanka all run this story based on what the Dawn says. They don't bother to check for authenticity either. Don't they know any people in Jaffna that they can call and check something like this with? I guess they don't.
History
I wouldn't find it hard to believe that this story is true considering how the LTTE have behaved with regard to such things in the past. They tried and failed to impose similar restrictions in Batticaloa last year. There it was mainly to do with the way the women dressed.
They also stopped the transmission of (Maharaja Broadcasting Corporation's) Shakti FM in Jaffna because they didn't agree to the music that Shakti was playing. The said it was too loud and too fast and not appropriate. By this time they had appointed themselves the judges of Tamil culture. They had asked Shakti to discontinue broadcasts and when the station didn't back down their transmission was bombed. Of course the LTTE did not claim responsibility for this but there is little doubt that they were behind it.
They also banned the Tamil film 'Boys' in the region saying it was against Tamil culture. The movie which proved to be a semi-hit in South India is a story about five Tamil boys and their dreams and aspirations.
Misinformation
This last story about the dress code in Jaffna could be true, but it's annoying that all the people who're shouting about it don't seem to realise that the only source we have is a Pakistani newspaper. However respected the Dawn may be in Pakistan, it's not a Sri Lankan newspaper, and when they cover a story that a lot of Sri Lankan's haven't even heard of we have to be a little suspicious, and try to confirm the story for ourselves before we put it on our sites.
It's very easy to copy and paste a story from another source and call it news simply because the people you got it from calls it news. We saw something similar like this happen about 6 months ago when a journalist from the Times of India picked up a story from spoof.com and published it on the Times site as news. So it's a little silly to not really think about where you're getting your story from.
Maybe it's news. Maybe the Dawn correspondent is being duped. Maybe someone maliciously planted the story to create anti-LTTE sentiment. Whatever the authenticity of the story it's just plain stupid and unprofessional on the the part of the news-editors on these sited to republish this information without any confirmation.
Right now, the only thing that these online news sites (even the pseudointellectual Lanka Academic) are doing is spreading unverified rumors. Exactly the opposite of what they're supposed to be doing.
Sometimes dogs bark because other dogs are barking.
Note: I've just been on the phone with someone in Jaffna who didn't notice anything like this. He's out right now checking to see if anyone there's heard about this. Updates will come as soon as I have the information.
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