Sri Lanka’s Press Complaints Commission marks tenth anniversary
The Press Complaints Commission of Sri Lanka (PCCSL), the only self-regulating mechanism in South Asia, commemorates 10th anniversary
In its 10 years of existence, the Sri Lanka Press Complaints Commission of Sri Lanka (PCCSL) has intervened in over 1000 cases through its dispute resolution council and has conducted capacity-building programmes for journalists on ethics and self-regulation. The Commission has been a positive feature in an environment that continues to be very challenging for independent media and journalists to operate freely and is the only self-regulatory mechanism of its kind in South Asia.
The 10 year anniversary was commemorated by organising an international conference on the self-regulation of media in Colombo on the Sri Lanka Press Institute premises. Participants from Asia and Europe, including representatives from IMS, brought with them examples of how media regulation mechanisms are set-up in India, Pakistan, Maldives, Nepal, Bangladesh, Norway, Myanmar and Denmark for discussion and inspiration. Themes such as ethical news reporting, the right to information, journalists’ ethics and high quality journalism were deliberated on during panel discussions with an view to providing input for the future development of the PCCSL.
Prof Savithri Goonasekera, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Colombo highlighted the strong link between good governance and self regulation of media in his keynote speech. Iskra Panevska, Programme Specialist Communications of UNESCO in New Delhi talked about the importance of the free and independent press in ensuring sound democracy and the set-up of media regulation systems in were presented and discussed. Lars Bestle, Head of International Media Support’s (IMS) Asia programme spoke about media ethics and good governance while Ranga Kalansooriya, the Regional Advisor for IMS in Asia chaired a session on self-regulatory mechanism country case studies.
The birth of PCCSL
The initial groundwork for a self-regulatory system was laid in a unique collective initiative taken by the Sri Lankan media industry in 1998 through the Colombo Declaration to work on a joint mandate to ensure the professional standards of journalism in Sri Lanka through the establishment of a self-regulatory mechanism and a capacity-building mechanism. Thus, in 2003 the Press Complaints Commission of Sri Lanka (PCCSL) and the Sri Lanka College of Journalism (SLCJ) were established as a joint initiative of the Newspaper Society of Sri Lanka, The Editors Guild of Sri Lanka, Free Media Movement and the Working Journalists Association of Sri Lanka under the management structure of the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI). The project was initially funded by Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Norway and Denmark still remain the core-funders to the Sri Lanka Press Institute.
IMS has been engaged with the SLPI since 2005. Together with SLPI and selected academic institutions in Sri Lanka, IMS is looking into the possibility of launching a Media Development Indicators (MDI) research project that would evaluate the present status of the Sri Lankan media landscape by assessing it according to the UNESCO Media Development Indicators.
