{"id":153876,"date":"2025-12-27T15:41:33","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T22:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=153876"},"modified":"2025-12-27T15:41:33","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T22:41:33","slug":"police-control-over-media-content-a-grave-threat-to-press-freedom-federation-of-media-employees-trade-unions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2025\/12\/27\/police-control-over-media-content-a-grave-threat-to-press-freedom-federation-of-media-employees-trade-unions\/","title":{"rendered":"Police control over media content a grave threat to press freedom: Federation of Media Employees&#8217; Trade Unions"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Hiru News<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>The Federation of Media Employees&#8217; Trade Unions (FMETU) has issued a statement warning that media freedom is being completely undermined by the police gaining the power to decide on media content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Federation emphasises that police intervention to determine whether a report is &#8220;accurate&#8221; or not is a direct threat to both democracy and the public&#8217;s right to information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a statement signed by General Secretary Tharindu Uduwaragedara, the FMETU highlights a dangerous trend: the state machinery using regulatory bodies as tools to suppress media outlets that are not to its liking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Furthermore, the Federation stresses that police power must not be used to intimidate or suppress media institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The statement concludes by unconditionally condemning such actions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Hiru News The Federation of Media Employees&#8217; Trade Unions (FMETU) has issued a statement warning that media freedom is being completely undermined by the police gaining the power to decide on media content. The Federation emphasises that police intervention to determine whether a report is &#8220;accurate&#8221; or not is a direct threat to both [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153877,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153876\/revisions\/153877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}