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.

- M.S.M. Ayub

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.

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.