Sri Lanka: Victory For Mindful Journalism

By Shelton A. Gunaratne –May 9, 2015

Dr. Shelton A. Gunaratne

Perhaps for the first time in the history of English language journalism in Sri Lanka, the Sunday Observer has demonstrated the suitability and feasibility of using mindful journalism as an option for the Anglo-American style of Orientalist journalism that the oligopolistic wire services had spread worldwide since the American Civil War.

I refer to the exemplary editorial published in the Vesak issue of the Sunday Observer under the title “19A: Moment in History.” Obviously, the writer is someone who is conversant with Eastern history and Buddhist literature, not a snob who wants to disgorge his/her knowledge of Anglo-American history in defence of parliamentary democracy.

S/he begins the editorial with Buddha’s allusion to democratic practice in the Sakyan and Vajjian tribal republics of eastern India that survived until the fourth century BCE. Buddha was a staunch advocate of republican democracy. Other tribal republics that practiced direct/representative/constitutional democracy included those of the Licchavis, the Videhas, the Nayas, the Mallas, and the Koliyas. But, as far as I know, this may be the first time that a mainstream English language newspaper in Sri Lanka has traced principles of democratic principles to sub continental Eastern history rather than to the West. If so, this may signify the beginning of mindful journalism in the country because editors are becoming mindful of their indefensible reification of the West as the progenitor of democracy.

The Sunday Island Vesak editorial also commendably dealt with a Buddhist theme although it failed, in my opinion, to use the crux of Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths—dukkha, samudaya, nirodha, and magga—to substantiate the need for tolerance of diversity within unity, to drive home the simple truth that most of our dukkha is the result of our unwillingness to comprehend that there is no self because all beings are composites of the Five Aggregates (material form, feelings, perception, karmic/mental fabrications, and consciousness), which are in a constant state of flux. Buddhism is not a religion but a phenomenology that everyone can investigate through mindful meditation. People of all religions can benefit from practicing Buddhist principles without compromising their own religious principles. An editorial with such a thrust would have been a supreme example of mindful reporting or journalism as a social good.

The Sunday Times, on the other hand, failed to apply the mindful approach by focusing its editorial on the diplomatic mission of the U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry without making the slightest attempt to analyze Kerry’s word and deed to the Four Noble Truths. Imagine an editorial writer’s audacity to defy the significance of Vesak by giving priority to the town visit of a Yankee Doodle. However, the Sunday Times had the good sense to publish a handful of in-depth Vesak features written by Buddhists believers like Primrose Jayasinghe, Mervyn Samarakoon and Ajahn Brahmavamso. But these articles were about special aspects of Buddhism; therefore they did not reflect the deliberate practice of mindful journalism.Read More