Over the last two decades or more serious concerns have been expressed in social and professional circles about the deteriorating standards of Sri Lankan journalism.

By abdicating professional standards the media not only loses respectability and the faith of the public but it also provides excuses for political intervention by governments that find freedom of expression a hinderance to its unfettered operations.

Attempts to arrest this steady decline by increasing the number of outlets for professional training have not been entirely successful most of all because the initial efforts were hurried, ill-prepared and possibly lacked competent trainers.

While these training institutions might impart some basic tenets of journalism and professional knowledge what is lacking is real, sensible training at the higher tiers of the vocation. This area has been ignored for forgotten.

The decline in professional standards is due to a number of reasons not the least of which is the politicisation of the vocation by the infusion of political stooges and hangers on into state-run media institutions, both print and electronic.

The rot started with the so-called broad-basing over 30 years ago of the Lake House group of newspapers that, in effect, was a nationalisation effected for political revenge in the guise of a public good.

With that act the flood-gates were opened for all sorts of shindigs including the planting of political stooges and journalist incompetents in state run media, often in positions of importance and influence.

Doubtless there were some good, competent journalists who found positions among the vast hordes of political public relations men and women who were catapulted into the media mainly to boost the delusions of grandeur of one minister or another an d the ego of some nondescript MP.

If the bureaucracy was increasingly politicised so was the media. Every political party in power has done so and they continue to do so even today. That is why no government, despite promises to the contrary when in opposition, has dared return the Lake House group to some form of private ownership or divested itself of the shares held by the state as the Associated Newspapers Act clearly requires the government to do.

Another reason for the perceptible drop in standards is the mushrooming of media outlets and the lack of competent and experienced journalists to service them. As a result often untrained or half-baked individuals are picked up to staff these institutions.

Those who have been involved in Sri Lankan media either as practising journalists or academics and researchers interested in it, have also watched with the concern the quality of writing in the English language media both in terms of the actual content and the sub editing which leave much to be desired.

But these are educational problems and the English language press would have to find their own ways to correct this decline.

My concern here is the lack of professionalism that is increasingly creeping into the media especially at those levels of our trade that should exercise stricter norms of competence instead of allowing any old rubbish that passes off as exercises in journalism to appear in print or on the air.

A good example is a recent report in the state-run Daily News which, while it is topical because of the recent military clashes between government forces and the LTTE- the Tamil Tigers separatists- shows the sheer lack of professionalism at all levels.

On August 5, the Daily News published a by-lined story datelined Mavilaru, the trigger point for the worst military engagements since the ceasefire four years ago.

If the report was written from Mavilaru, as it is purported to be, then any journalist worth his salt-or a pinch of salt- would have set the scene- where in Mavilaru is he located, how near is he to the sluice-gate that is at the heart of the conflict, where is the Sri Lankan army in relation to the sluice-gate and from his own position, has it achieved its objective, are there people around and if so what to do they say, could one hear firing and if so how close.

There is all this and more that any professional journalist would have made the centrepiece of this story, especially if one is one of the first journalists, if not the only one in the area.

But there is not one word of this but all about media reports including pro-LTTE media reports about Muttur and hearsay about fighting there and other tittle-tattle that could have been written in Colombo without moving one yard from the city

Is the reader enlightened one iota about Mavilaru or what the area looks like, leave alone the situation on the ground which any competent journalist would have latched on to, which is why one is on location.

This is one of the problems that arise when you use material from free lancers who are not trained reporters and cannot distinguish between reportage and comment.

That so-called Mavilaru report is replete with comment and no tangible reporting.

Where then does the fault lie? If a newspaper accepts copy from individuals who have not learnt to differentiate between news reporting and opinion/comment, those in senior positions who serve as daily gatekeepers should act and ask the writer to do his assigned task or spike the copy- that is newspeak for dumping it in the waste bin.

How this nonsense get past the news editor who should have been the first gatekeeper to vet the copy and set it right. Where was the chief sub editor who should have drawn the attention of the news desk about the dateline and the fact that the report has nothing to do with the dateline and asked the copy be rewritten or done it at the desk? Are those practises now abandoned?

If both gatekeepers were by-passed and the copy ended up with a deputy editor or editor who passed it then it shows incompetence at the highest levels of the Daily News, a once highly respected newspaper.

This is exactly what happens when propagandists fill the shoes of professionals and any old rubbish passes muster as long as it boosts somebody's ego or some undertaking.

An unfortunate consequence of this kind of crude and misleading journalism is that aspiring recruits to the media or initiates into the vocation might well accept this as the correct way of reporting and inject opinion into their news reports.

And who is going to tell them it is wrong. Nobody on the Daily News, surely.