{"id":45293,"date":"2015-07-05T15:26:13","date_gmt":"2015-07-05T22:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=45293"},"modified":"2015-07-05T15:26:13","modified_gmt":"2015-07-05T22:26:13","slug":"media-groups-slam-sirisena-for-bringing-back-press-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/07\/05\/media-groups-slam-sirisena-for-bringing-back-press-council\/","title":{"rendered":"Media groups slam Sirisena for bringing back Press Council"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy The\u00a0Sunday Times<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>The constituent partners of the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI) yesterday condemned the\u00a0Executive actions of President Maithripala Sirisena this week to re-activate the Sri Lanka\u00a0Press Council. The SLPI said the President was re-introducing the dormant legislation that\u00a0provided for wide ranging punitive powers including that of imprisoning media personnel.<\/p>\n<p>A hard-hitting statement by newspaper publishers, national editors, media activists and\u00a0working journalists accused President Sirisena of reversing an election promise of his to\u00a0ensure the stoppage of direct and indirect threats and intimidation against print media\u00a0personnel and their owners. They asked if this was the short-term and long-term programme he\u00a0promised in his election manifesto to protect the freedom of all media personnel.<\/p>\n<p>The SLPI which represents the Newspaper Society of Sri Lanka, the Editors\u2019 Guild of Sri\u00a0Lanka, the Free Media Movement and the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association said the\u00a0president\u2019s action was illegal and that he did not have the basic courtesy\u201d to consult\u00a0stakeholders.<\/p>\n<p>A President who has not only vowed to uphold media freedom, but also to regain lost\u00a0freedoms and repeatedly said he is the only President who did away with Executive powers,\u00a0has unilaterally exercised these very powers to re-introduce laws that allow his nominees to\u00a0jail journalists and publishers,\u201d the statement said.It added that constituent partners of\u00a0the SLPI have demanded from successive political leaders, the repeal of the draconian Press\u00a0Council Law and call upon President Sirisena to rescind his ill-advised Executive decision\u00a0to reactivate the Press Council, with immediate effect without dragging this country back\u00a0into the abyss of a repressive, un-democratic state\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>President Sirisena appointed new members to the Press Council on Thursday. The UNP\u00a0Government had stopped the functioning of the Press Council in January this year after the\u00a0victory of President Sirisena. Under the controversial 1973 Press Council Law, it is the\u00a0President who appoints members to the Press Council, but two seats reserved for journalists\u00a0and workers must be appointed after receiving names from media associations and trade\u00a0unions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy The\u00a0Sunday Times The constituent partners of the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI) yesterday condemned the\u00a0Executive actions of President Maithripala Sirisena this week to re-activate the Sri Lanka\u00a0Press Council. The SLPI said the President was re-introducing the dormant legislation that\u00a0provided for wide ranging punitive powers including that of imprisoning media personnel. A hard-hitting statement by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45293","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=45293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}