{"id":49970,"date":"2016-11-29T01:08:47","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T05:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=49970"},"modified":"2016-11-29T01:16:04","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T05:16:04","slug":"president-and-premier-will-verbally-criticise-media-but-no-journalist-will-be-harmed-physically","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=49970","title":{"rendered":"President and Premier will Verbally Criticise Media but no Journalist will be Harmed Physically."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Saman Indrajith<\/strong><\/p>\n

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday told Parliament that he would not hesitate to verbally attack the media when and where necessary but no journalist would be harmed. He said that though the government criticised the conduct of media not a single journalist would be abducted or assaulted under the good governance rule.<\/p>\n

Participating in the committee stage debate on budget 2017 under the expenditure heads of the Ministry of Parliamentary Reforms and Mass Media, the Prime Minister said: “When the media organisations vehemently attack us, we, too, can reply to them.<\/p>\n

Ultimately the people in the country will come to know who is right.”<\/p>\n

“Both the President and I do criticise the media publicly, but we do not want to send anybody home. We do not make arson attacks or deploy army to abduct or kill anybody. Therefore, have no fear; we will not stoop to that level,” he said.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The PM referring to an English daily said his criticism on its editor was valid and it would not be withdrawn. “I have not suppressed them. I will not set fire to the press” he said. Observing that a private electronic media organisation is also highly critical of him he said he would not pelt stones at it or abduct any journalist in it. <\/p>\n

“If I want to reply I will do and if I do not then will remain silent. I may question them here to dispel the evil eye (“vas dos”). I, too, talked about the media freedom and fought for it. I have the right to speak on media freedom more than anybody else. However, these editors should know their positions. He tried to appease the former ruler. He instigated racism and finally also told me to resign as I was not a racist. He asked the people to go along with Mahinda Rajapaksa, but people rejected that. Now it is time for him to go,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We will not abduct anybody, but if they attack us we will verbally attack too. See your faults and correct them,” he added.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:The Island<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Saman Indrajith Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday told Parliament that he would not hesitate to verbally attack the media when and where necessary but no journalist would be harmed. He said that though the government criticised the conduct of media not a single journalist would be abducted or assaulted under the good governance rule. …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘President and Premier will Verbally Criticise Media but no Journalist will be Harmed Physically.’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49971,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49970\/revisions\/49971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}