Sri Lanka Media Watch

– Says it believes that the “7.30 p.m. programme on Sri Lanka” has breached the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Code of Practice in several significant areas.

Official Complaint about an ABC Programme: 18 October 2011 7.30pm programme on Sri Lanka

Complaint made by Sri Lanka Media Watch (Coordinator: Peter Walker)

On 18 October 2011, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s 7.30pm news broadcasted a programme entitled “Sri Lankan President Under Investigation”. This programme has made number of very serious allegations against three Sri Lankan officials, Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia, Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe; Dr Palitha Kohona, foreign secretary of Sri Lanka during the final years of the war; and Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa. At the middle of the programme there were also some allegations leveled by Meena Krishnamurthy, an Australian citizen of Sri Lankan Tamil descent.

ABC reported that in 2004 Ms Krishnamurthy “travelled to Sri Lanka to work in an orphanage” and Ms Krishnamurthy herself claimed that she went to Sri Lanka to “learn Tamil”. ABC stated that “There she met her partner, a man who, she says, worked as an accountant within the civil administration of the LTTE, the militant Tamil Tigers.” ABC then reported that “in 2008 when the war intensified, they joined crowds of displaced Tamils on the move.” Ms Krishnamurthy claims to have seen a hospital being attacked: “I, with my own eyes, I saw a hospital being shelled.” She also claimed that she knew a doctor who went to work in a hospital and was killed in a shell attack at the hospital. She stated that “I really want Australians to understand that I saw a massacre of people.” She also gave an explanation for her allegations: “The reason I decided to tell my story was because I’ve always believed in justice” and that “the least we can ask for is some sort of justice.”

ABC also reported that Ms Krishnamurthy claimed that there was Sri Lankan naval gunfire: she says some time later she was at a coastal clinic, and had to dodge since fire coming from the sea. Krishnamurthy stated “while we were there, we heard a different kind of sound, and when I asked people around me, they said like, ‘Oh, that’s a cannon fire,’ and it was coming from the direction of the ocean.”

There seem systematic failures on the part of the ABC, and breaches of the ABC’s Code of Practice in respect of this programme. In partial mitigation it should perhaps be pointed out from the start that ABC journalists were unwittingly interacting with what can only be described as a very experienced propaganda operation. A western intelligence service has noted “the LTTE international propaganda war is conducted at an extremely sophisticated level”. (1) It appears that ABC’s 7.30pm programme accepted questionable material at face value without even the most basic of fact checking or attempts to corroborate what were very serious allegations.

Meena Krishnamurthy’s background

While the ABC programme reported that Ms Krishnamurthy had gone to Sri Lanka to work in “an orphanage”, it is very clear from the documentary evidence and the testimony of several of her former colleagues that Ms Krishnamurthy travelled to Sri Lanka in 2004, to join and become an active member of the “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam” the LTTE. (2)It’s also been well-established and documented. Following her move to Sri Lanka in 2004, she represented the TYO (Tamil Youth Organization) in visits abroad, including one to Europe in 2005. The TYO is a LTTE-controlled organization, and several of its members have been arrested for illegal activities in the United States and elsewhere too.

According to the ABC programme, Ms Krishnamurthy travelled to Sri Lanka to work in an orphanage. The simple fact is that, she moved to Sri Lanka to become active in the LTTE and its supportive organizations. She was given military training for several months in LTTE camps in Sri Lanka, and was a member of the LTTE’s Malathi women’s brigade, known also by the nom de guerre of “Eelanadhi”. Given her English language skills, and dual nationality, she was understandably also tasked to engage in international propaganda work, something in which the LTTE excelled.

Further, documentary details of Ms Krishnamurthy’s LTTE affiliations have been released by the Sri Lankan government to the media and can be made available to the ABC if necessary.

The LTTE was a militant organization, led by Velupillai Prabakharan, by which, he sought to establish an independent Tamil state, “Tamil Eelam”, in the north and the east of the island, separate from Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority. Given the LTTE’s unambiguous use of terrorism, thirty-two countries listed it as a terrorist organization. The United States designated the LTTE as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in October 1997: it was named as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist movement on 2 November 2001. The European Union listed the LTTE as a terrorist organisation on 17 May 2006. In 2006, the United Kingdom listed the LTTE as a proscribed terrorist group under the Terrorism Act 2000. Since 2006, Canada has listed the movement as a terrorist group, and does not grant residency to LTTE members on the grounds that they have participated in crimes against humanity. India listed the LTTE as a terrorist organization in 1992.

This is the organization with which Ms Krishnamurthy is very closely associated. By early 2009, in the course of a government offensive, the LTTE had been pushed back into a rapidly decreasing area of land in the north-east of Sri Lanka, including areas declared by the government to be No Fire Zones (NFZ), until it was finally defeated in May of that year. Ms Krishnamurthy, as a trained LTTE cadre, had been with them throughout that period.

Ms Krishnamurthy’s claims are disingenuous and self-serving where not simply false. She claims, for example, “I saw a massacre of people” but does not give an account of the circumstances in which the LTTE murdered thousands of the very Tamil civilians it claimed to be protecting in the very area in which she was present. In one instance alone, for example, University Teachers for Human Rights, a Sri Lankan human rights organization, reported that on 14 May, the LTTE killed 500 civilians near Nanthikadal Lagoon as they tried to cross over to the other side or to Vattuvakkal to the south. (3)There are dozens of other examples of the LTTE’s killings of innocent civilians in and around the no-fire zones. Gordon Weiss, the author of The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers (4) and himself a noted anti-government commentator, states that the LTTE shot, executed and “beat to death many hundreds of people” and ensured “the deaths of thousands of teenagers by press-ganging them into the front lines, and [killed] those children and their parents who resisted”.(5) The University Teachers for Human Rights, described by Weiss as a “highly regarded” and “independent” organization (6), noted:

“It must be placed on record that, in the estimate of a school principal who was there in the NFZ, about 25% of the civilian casualties in the NFZ, averaging about 15 to 20 a day, were of people killed by the LTTE when trying to escape. Other estimates are similar.”(7)

None of this was reflected in Ms Krishnamurthy’s comments. Given that the organization she was a member and was responsible for those thousands of deaths, this is, perhaps unsurprising. What it does is, place her stated concern for “justice” in a particularly cynical light. It is however jarring that the ABC seemed to have missed these facts, or failed to press Ms Krishnamurthy on this and other issues.

Ms Krishnamurthy’s claims of naval cannon fire

ABC also reported that Ms Krishnamurthy had claimed that there was Sri Lankan naval gunfire aimed at civilians on the shore: “Ms Krishnamurthy says some time later she was at a coastal clinic, and had to dodge since fire coming from the sea.” Ms Krishnamurthy stated: “While we were there we heard a different kind of sound, and when I asked people around me, they were like, ‘Oh, that’s cannon fire,’ and it was coming from the direction of the ocean.” There can be no clearer example of a self-serving claim than that made by Ms Krishnamurthy alleging naval gunfire directed at civilians on the shore. It is clear to any outside observer that the naval gunfire claim was made for one reason and one reason only, the fact that the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia was a former admiral in the Sri Lankan navy and had commanded naval forces during the war.

It is a simple matter of fact that neither at the time, nor in the almost two and half years since the end of the conflict has there ever been any allegation of naval gunfire aimed at civilians on the shore. There is not a single mention or allegation in the ‘Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka’, a 196-page document with 262 footnotes, that the Sri Lankan navy shelled any targets, let alone civilian targets, during the crisis.(8)

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an international non-profit organization “dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association”. An AAAS report into allegations of shelling into the no-fire zones in question noted that “Fortunately from an investigative point of view, the CSZ [Civilian Safety Zone] is located at the end of a narrow spit of land bounded by the ocean on one side, and a broad lagoon on the other. This unique geography substantially simplifies the situation, as incoming shells from the north would originate from naval units, which are deemed to be less likely as a source in this conflict by AAAS.” (9)

It is also worth mentioning that the International Committee of the Red Cross commended the Sri Lankan navy for its role in the humanitarian operation during the crisis. The ICRC noted that the navy personnel “displayed a strict discipline and respect of rules of engagement and at the same time a very respectful and kind attitude to help those in need. In that regard in addition to all others who contributed to this medical evacuation, we wish to express our special thanks to the Director General for Operations, at the Navy HQ, the Officiating Commander Eastern Naval Command, in Trincomalee, and to the Deputy Area Commander North, in Jaffna. They spent many sleepless hours coordinating the operation and played a crucial role to make it a success. These days demonstrated that soldiering is a noble profession”. (10)

Displacing Tamil civilians

ABC’s 7.30pm programme and Ms Krishnamurthy managed to miss or chose to ignore the enforced and illegal displacement of Tamil civilians. ABC reported of Ms Krishnamurthy and her husband that “in 2008 when the war intensified, they joined crowds of displaced Tamils on the move.” Unfortunately this demonstrates a naivety and unprofessionalism on the part of the ABC. The “crowds of displaced Tamils on the move” were the hundreds and thousands of Tamil civilians forcibly being displaced by the LTTE and taken along with them as human shields. And as opposed to having “joined” the displaced civilians, as LTTE cadres Ms Krishnamurthy and her husband were part of the organization that forcibly abducted them.

That these Tamil civilians were forcibly displaced by the LTTE fighters such as Ms Krishnamurthy and her husband is unambiguous. In 2009, Human Rights Watch stated: “Retreating from Sri Lankan Army (SLA) advances, the LTTE has forcibly taken along all civilians under its control. As the territory held by the LTTE has shrunk-now a short, narrow strip on the northeast coast of the island-the civilian population has been dangerously forced into a smaller and smaller space. In violation of the laws of war, the LTTE has refused to allow civilians to flee the fighting, repeatedly fired on those trying to reach government held territory, and deployed forces near densely populated areas. The civilians who remain under LTTE control, including children, are subject to forced recruitment into LTTE forces and hazardous forced labor on the battlefield.” (11)

On 28 January 2009, for example, Human Rights Watch also noted “As the LTTE…retreated into its stronghold in the northern Vanni area since the start of a Sri Lankan army offensive in October 2008, the rebel group…forced civilians deeper into territory they control.” (12) Amnesty International also confirmed that “As the Tigers…lost territory, they…forced thousands of Tamil civilians to move with them.” (13) (Emphasis added.) In April 2009, the British and French governments noted that “it is clear that the LTTE…have been forcefully preventing civilians from leaving the conflict area and we deplore their determination to use civilians as a human shield.” (14) Later that month, the Economist reported that “at least 60,000 more [civilians] (and perhaps twice that number) remain as hostages of the Tigers”.(15) In early May 2009, Amnesty International stated: “At this point, an estimated 50,000 civilians are still being held as human shields by the Tigers in a small coastal strip in northeastern Sri Lanka, surrounded by the Sri Lankan army on three sides.” (16)

Weiss provides the reason for this forced displacement, something which is central to the events in the last few weeks of the conflict:

“The presence of civilians served multiple purposes for the Tiger command. Primarily a civilian population was a buffer against an all-out assault by the army. Too many pictures of dead children transmitted around the world would attract outrage, and might limit the political resolve of the government’s coalition and weaken its support from foreign governments.” (17)

Human Rights Watch made it clear at the time that “LTTE forces are increasingly deployed near civilians in violation of the laws of war…it is considered to be ‘human shielding,’ which is a war crime.” (18)

This particular war crime, one which Ms Krishnamurthy may have been party to as a member of the LTTE, is not mentioned in the 7.30pm programme.

Weiss also documented the LTTE’s attitude towards Tamil civilians: “The safety of civilians always came a distant second to their political and military objectives.” (19)

The shelling of hospitals

A key allegation in the programme is Ms Krishnamurthy’s claim to have seen a hospital being attacked: “I, with my own eyes, I saw a hospital being shelled.” She also claimed that a female doctor she knew was killed in an attack in a hospital. It is regrettable that in the ABC’s interview with Ms Krishnamurthy they did not press her for any relevant “who, when, where, what” facts, the location of the hospital or the name of the doctor or the dates of the alleged attacks.

These would have been very relevant for several reasons.

The University Teaches for Human Rights, notes for example, that senior LTTE cadres confirmed that the movement had deliberately attacked hospitals: “A senior officer…blamed the LTTE for much of the suffering and said emphatically that the LTTE fired shells on civilian institutions such as hospitals.” (20)

Gordon Weiss reveals that: “There is good evidence that at least on some occasions the Tamil Tigers fired artillery into their own people. The terrible calculation was that with enough dead Tamils, a toll would eventually be reached that would lead to international outrage and intervention.” (21)

Weiss also states with regard to the hospital at Puthukudiyirippu, possibly the one at the middle of the ABC’s claim, that it was said to have been hit by artillery fire on several occasions, and that “a number of strikes appeared to be from Tamil Tiger positions”.(22) (Emphasis added.) UTHR also reported LTTE artillery attacks on this hospital. The US government also reported that “The UN noted it could not be ruled out that the LTTE shelled civilian areas to assign blame to the SLA.” (23)

Weiss pointed out an obvious and pivotal fact, which was how difficult it was to tell where the shelling was coming from: “Many civilians have been killed or injured. Our staff members witnessed the death of civilians. But we cannot determine where the fire came from.” (24) In late January 2009, referring to an attack which killed and injured dozens of civilians inside a no-fire zone, Gordon Weiss noted: “We don’t know where the firing came from.” (25) The University Teachers for Human Rights also placed on record that in the last few months “the shelling of civilians continued, but it became increasingly difficult to determine who was responsible.” (26) Additionally, the 2009 US government report on the crisis noted that “numerous commercial imagery-based reports issued by UN agencies and non-governmental organizations identified evidence of shelling in the NFZ. U.S. government sources are unable to attribute the reported damage to either the Government of Sri Lanka or LTTE forces.” (27) That is to say that the United States government, with all the immense satellite and other technological surveillance facilities at its disposal, was unable to ascertain who was responsible for any shelling. In summary, therefore, the UN, the US government, UTHR and satellite surveillance was unable to ascertain who was responsible for shelling the civilians in the “no-fire zones”.

Could one or more of the alleged attacks on hospitals referred to in the ABC news item in question have come from the LTTE? How can the ABC differentiate between alleged attacks by the government or by the LTTE, leaving aside self-serving claims by propagandists such as Ms Krishnamurthy? A fair and balanced programme would have included the fact that the LTTE were shelling into their own civilian population, something confirmed by Weiss, the UN and the UTHR.

The sorts of claims made by Ms Krishnamurthy, of deliberate attempts by the Sri Lankan army to kill civilians, jar with the observations of people such as Weiss.

“It remains a credit to many of the front-line SLA soldiers that, despite odd cruel exceptions, 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. Soldiers yelled out to civilians, left gaps in their lines while they waved white flags to attract people forward and bodily plucked the wounded from foxholes and bunkers. Troops bravely waded into the lagoon under fire to rescue wounded people threading their way out of the battlefield or to help parents with their children, and gave their rations to civilians as they lay in fields, exhausted in their first moments of safety after years of living under the roar and threat of gunfire.” (28)

Weiss also noted:

“There were many acts of mercy that emerged from the inferno of civil war. The bedraggled columns of civilians were massed and counted, fed as well as possible and then transported by truck and bus to waiting internment camps in Vavuniya. Front-line soldiers gave their own rations to the terrified civilians.” (29)

Weiss provides an additional description of the treatment of civilians as they encountered government forces:

“The front-line soldiers who received the first civilians as they escaped to government lines, those who guarded them in the camps and the civilian and military doctors who provided vital treatment distinguished themselves most commonly through their mercy and care.” (30)

Complaint

We believe that the programme in question, has breached the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Code of Practice (available at http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/documents/codeofpractice2011.pdf) in several significant areas.

Accuracy

We note that the Code of Practice places considerable weight on accuracy:

“Principles: The ABC has a statutory duty to ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information is accurate according to the recognized standards of objective journalism. Credibility depends heavily on factual accuracy.”

The Code also states that

“The ABC requires that reasonable efforts must be made to ensure accuracy in all fact-based content. The ABC accuracy standard applies to assertions of fact…The ABC should make reasonable efforts, appropriate in the context, to signal to audiences gradations in accuracy, for example by querying interviewees, qualifying bald assertions, supplementing the partly right and correcting the plainly wrong.”

We note that ABC “has a statutory duty to ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information is accurate…Credibility depends heavily on factual accuracy”. We note that the ABC programme admitted that Ms Krishnamurthy’s “claims are untested”. It is difficult to reconcile ABC’s Code of Practice, its statutory duty to ensure accuracy and its general commitment to accuracy with the broadcasting of “untested” claims of a very serious nature about a very controversial issue in a programme that named three officials.

The programme in question was inaccurate in a number of instances:

The claim, that Ms Krishnamurthy went to Sri Lanka to work in an orphanage, when it is clear that she travelled to Sri Lanka to become active in the LTTE and its youth organization, TYO. ABC’s description of Ms Krishnamurthy was fundamentally inaccurate in that at no point was her involvement in the LTTE mentioned.

The claim, that Ms Krishnamurthy and her husband joined “displaced” civilians when the organization, they were part of, very clearly forcibly displaced the civilians in order to use them as human shields.

The claim made by Ms Krishnamurthy that the Sri Lanka navy had directed cannon fire at civilians on the shore – a claim uncorroborated by any other source.

The Code of Practice states with regards to “standards”, that its journalists must: “2.1 Make reasonable efforts to ensure that material facts are accurate and presented in context. 2.2 Do not present factual content in a way that will materially mislead the audience. In some cases, this may require appropriate labels or other explanatory information.”

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation states that “For the purposes of the ABC’s Editorial Policies, a material fact is one which is relevant or essential to understanding the subject matter or issue being discussed, as distinguished from irrelevant or incidental.” (‘Accuracy: News, Current Affairs and Factual Content’, 11 April 2011, available at http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/documents/20110408/GNAccuracyNewsINS.pdf.)

It is evident that the material facts concerning both Ms Krishnamurthy and the claims she made were inaccurately presented. It would have been a very critical material fact for ABC to have pointed out that Ms Krishnamurthy was not an innocent Australian “orphanage” worker who happened to have found herself in a war-zone, but was in fact a partisan, fully-trained and active member of Tamil Tigers. This would have had very clear implications for the sorts of claims she was making during the programme. Not to have done so misled the audience.

The programme in question seriously misled the audience in its assertion, that Ms Krishnamurthy and her husband joined “displaced” civilians when the organization they were part of very clearly forcibly displaced the civilians in order to use them as human shields.

The programme also did not present the material facts. Firstly, that while Ms Krishnamurthy claimed that government forces were shelling hospitals, Gordon Weiss, human rights organizations and the UN stated that the LTTE had deliberately shelled and attacked hospitals within the area at the time of the allegations. And secondly, that key sources stated that it was in any instance very difficult to ascertain the origin of the artillery fire.

We believe that the programme’s breach of the Code of Practice in this respect was a serious one. The ABC’s ‘Impartiality (TV News Content) Final Report’ notes that “A serious breach is defined by either (or both) of the following: It materially alters the viewer’s understanding of the story, it seriously misrepresents an individual or an organization.” (‘Impartiality (TV News Content) Final Report’, July 2009, available at http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/documents/qa7_final_report-july_2009.pdf.)

Presenting Ms Krishnamurthy as an orphanage worker when she was a participant in the conflict and therefore at the very least had her own political agenda, absolutely misrepresented her to the audience; at the same time the absence of this crucial information would have altered the viewer’s understanding of the story as the audience would have had no reason to doubt her allegations.

The Code of Practice also commits the ABC to “gather and present news and information with due impartiality.” As outlined above, the programme has failed to present material facts in respect of alleged attacks on hospitals and their attribution. The exclusive focus on alleged government attacks implies a lack of impartiality on the part of the programme.

The ABC programme, while reporting that “unease is mounting about what happened in the final months, when the Government had the Tamil Tigers and hundreds of thousands of civilians surrounded” did not in any way address the extensive war crimes to which the LTTE – of which Ms Krishnamurthy was a member – had been party. The programme’s “unease” appears to be selective. The programme was said to be dealing with war crimes in Sri Lanka in the last few months of the conflict, but simply did not address the horrendous and well-documented war crimes committed by the LTTE. This does not satisfy “due impartiality” on the part of the ABC. The fact that a Sri Lankan human rights group reported that at least one quarter of all the civilians killed in the relevant period were killed by the LTTE simply for trying to escape LTTE custody is crucial in this respect. This figure does not include those civilians killed by LTTE artillery and mortar attacks on its own civilian groups.

The Code of Practice’s section regarding “Fair and honest dealing” states that “Fair and honest dealing is essential to maintaining trust with audiences and with those who participate in or are otherwise directly affected by ABC content.”

In presenting Ms Krishnamurthy as an innocent orphanage worker when it is evident that she was a full-trained and active LTTE member, the programme violated the trust of the audience.

We note that the ‘ABC Editorial Policies Guidance Note: Accuracy In News’ states that journalists must ensure that “facts are in context and not misleading”. It also observes that “Inaccuracy can also arise through the omission of factual information or when material is presented out of context, where the result can materially mislead the audience.” It also states that

“Generally speaking, the strongest expectation of accuracy applies to news and analysis of current events relating to political or controversial matters of public importance. In general, the more substantial the piece of content the more likely the audience is to expect detailed context in the provision of factual content. In a wide-ranging discussion, interview or talk-back situation the audience would be less likely to be relying on the precise accuracy of every fact presented and discussed, while at the other end of the scale, a news flash on a breaking story of major national or international importance, or the provision of time-critical information on a state of emergency are situations where audience expectation of accuracy would be high.”

Allegations of involvement in war crimes at the highest level certainly qualify as “controversial matters of public importance”. There was, however, inadequate “detailed context” to say the least. And while there may well have been the “strongest expectation of accuracy” this too was missing.

Simple rules of journalism, such as who, what, where, when and why do not seem to have been followed, especially in respect of the allegations central to the programme: where were the hospitals allegedly shelled, when were the hospitals said to have been attacked, who was the female doctor killed? That none of these key facts were addressed is very regrettable.

And one may have asked why now, and why previously unheard-of allegations of naval gunfire? The ‘ABC Editorial Policies Guidance Note: Accuracy In News’ warns that

“Third party providers may have a particular vested interest in the material being provided – for example, corporate video releases, footage or interviews that are provided by corporate or government sources, lobby groups, think tanks, etc…, and any such interest should be investigated. Such material where an interest has been identified will always be clearly attributed, and issues of contextual accuracy will be carefully considered. Where relevant, inclusion of such material in ABC content may require the addition of context or factual material from other sources in order to ensure overall accuracy.”

It is clear that Ms Krishnamurthy’s claims were not corroborated by any other source. The International Commission of Jurists in Australia was itself commenting on her claims and was not they in a position to corroborate them. And it is abundantly evident that these questionable and opportunistic allegations were packaged together by people associated with the LTTE with the express purpose of politically embarrassing Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa while he attended the 2011 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth.

We wish to register a formal complaint about these breaches of the ABC’s Code of Practice by the ABC’s 18 October 2011 7.30pm programme item on Sri Lanka and providing a platform for Ms Krishnamurthy’s claims. We believe that the content of the programme has breached the Code in that is seriously misled the audience with regard to several material facts. These include Ms Krishnamurthy’s background, most notably her membership of the LTTE and other pro-LTTE organizations; that far from joining displaced Tamil civilians on the move. Ms Krishnamurthy and her husband were part of the LTTE organization which forced Tamil civilians to accompany the organization as human shields – itself a war crime; the fact that the programme did not point out that the LTTE shelled hospitals and Tamil civilians in areas under its control, and that it was stated by independent sources that it was in any instance difficult to differentiate between which side may have attacked locations with the crisis zone; that the programme, while dealing with alleged war crimes at the end of the war in Sri Lanka, did not also mention that the organisation to which Ms Krishnamurthy belonged and in which she served, the LTTE, had murdered thousands of its own civilians either in artillery attacks or for trying to escape from LTTE control.

The programme also failed in key recognized standards of objective journalism, especially the factual accuracy of the claims made by Ms Krishnamurthy: the location and times of the attacks on hospitals claimed by Ms Krishnamurthy, as well as the identity of the female doctor she claimed was killed were not placed on record.

All of these breaches, especially the serious misrepresentation of Ms Krishnamurthy’s background and that the organization, which she was a member of, was itself said to be shelling hospitals at the same time as her claims, materially altered the viewer’s understanding of the story.

References:

1) ‘Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s (LTTE) International Organization and Operations – A Preliminary Analysis’, Commentary No 77, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Ottawa, 1999, available at

http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/com77e.htm

2) See, for example, “Australian Based LTTE Network Exposed”, Ministry of Defence, Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Columbo, 4 November, available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgD1Xrr4Z5Q.

3) “Let Them Speak: Truth about Sri Lanka’s Victims of War”, University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), Sri Lanka, Special Report No. 34, 13 December 2009.

4) Gordon Weiss, ‘The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers’, The Bodley Head, London, 2011, p.69.

5) Ibid, pp. 141-42.

6) Ibid.

7) “Let Them Speak: Truth about Sri Lanka’s Victims of War”, op. cit.

8) ‘Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka’, United Nations, New York, 31 March 2011, available at http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Sri_Lanka/POE_Report_Full.pdf.

9) “High-Resolution Satellite Imagery and the Conflict in Sri Lanka”, Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington-DC, 12 August 2009, available at http://shr.aaas.org/geotech/srilanka/srilanka.shtml.

10) “ICRC commended Sri Lanka Navy for evacuating Tamil civilians safely during the war”, ‘Columbo Page’, 21 June 2011, available at http://www.colombopage.com/archive_11A/Jun21_1308594615CH.php.

11) ‘War on the Displaced. Sri Lankan Army and LTTE Abuses against Civilians in the Vanni’, Human Rights Watch, New York, February 2009.

12) “Sri Lanka: Urgent Action Needed to Prevent Civilian Deaths”, Human Rights Watch, New York, 28 January 2009, available at http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/498178afc.html.

13) “Shocking video from Sri Lankan camp for displaced civilians”, Amnesty International USA, 7 May 2009, available at http://blog.amnestyusa.org/iar/shocking-video-from-sri-lankan-camp-for-displaced-civilians/.

14) “Britain accuses Tamil Tigers of using civilians as human shields. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, and his French counterpart said that Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka were using civilians as human shields, which was preventing them from leaving the conflict zone”, ‘The Daily Telegraph’, 16 April 2009, available at

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/srilanka/5161118/Britain-accuses-Tamil-Tigers-of-using-civilians-as-human-shields.html

15) “Civilians escape the Tigers. Sri Lanka’s army enters the last redoubt of the Tamil Tigers”, ‘The Economist’, 20 April 2009, available at http://www.economist.com/node/13522269.

16) “Shocking video from Sri Lankan camp for displaced civilians”, Amnesty International USA, 7 May 2009, available at

http://blog.amnestyusa.org/iar/shocking-video-from-sri-lankan-camp-for-displaced-civilians/

17) Weiss, op. cit., p.108.

18) ‘War on the Displaced. Sri Lankan Army and LTTE Abuses against Civilians in the Vanni’, op. cit. For a detailed analysis by Human Rights Watch of the development of LTTE restrictions imposed on civilians in the Vanni, see ‘Sri Lanka – Trapped and Mistreated: LTTE Abuses against Civilians in the Vanni’, Human Rights Watch, New York, 15 December 2008, available at http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/12/15/trapped-and-mistreated-0, and ‘Besieged, Displaced and Detained: The Plight of Civilians in Sri Lanka’s Vanni Region’, Human Rights Watch, New York, December 2008, available at http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/12/22/besieged-displaced-and-detained.

19) Weiss, op. cit., p.114.

20) “Let Them Speak: Truth about Sri Lanka’s Victims of War”, op. cit.

21) Weiss, op. cit., p.109.

22) Ibid., p.131.

23) “Northern Sri Lanka SitRep 15: Heavy Fighting Continues; UN”, US Embassy Columbo, 18 February 2009.

24) “‘Civilians die’ in S Lanka battle”, BBC News, 26 January 2009, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/7850603.stm

25) “UN says dozens of civilians killed as Tigers flee”, Agence France-Presse, 27 January 2009.

26)”A Marred Victory and a Defeat Pregnant with Foreboding”, University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), Sri Lanka, Special Report No. 32, 10 June 2009.

27) ‘Report to Congress on Incidents During the Recent Conflict in Sri Lanka’, op. cit., p.10.

28) Ibid., p.217.

29) Ibid., p.212.

30) Ibid., p.186.