The Channel 4 News Editor Ben de Pear,  today provided a detailed response to Sri Lanka’s ‘Corrupted Journalism’ booklet, which looked to discredit the work of Channel 4 News.

Extracts of his written statement are reproduced below:

“In the media pack given to all arriving journalists at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) being held in Sri Lanka next week is a 222 page book called ‘Corrupted Journalism’.”

“It is an out and out attack on Channel 4 and our journalism. As we only received our visas this week (our accreditation process took 8-10 weeks as opposed to the2-3 weeks it took everyone else) I do not have this weighty tome in my hands, so I can’t react to everything it says.”

Commenting on Rajapaksa’s CHOGM welcome statement, De Pear said,

“His (Rajapaksa’s) government’s appalling human rights record, the lack of accountability for past and present crimes and the trampling of the freedom of speech make these words from him a mockery.”

Reiterating the authenticity of the Channel 4 evidence, De Pear stressed,

“We ran the video, because it was clearly genuine. The Sri Lankans said it was fake, took action through the British TV regulator and then started to campaign against us which as included the arrest and mistreatment of people who have Channel 4 videos, the hounding of members of JDS across continents, and hundreds of hundreds of emails, tweets, texts and messages the contents of which are too graphic to write here.

“All three times Ofcom found in our favour, found our journalism to be balanced and objective an dismissed all Sri Lankan complaints. All other complaints made by the government were ignored by Ofcom.”

“Our journalism and authenticity of the videos was similarly scrutinised by the United Nations. Employing two of the world’s foremost video and audio experts, a thorough three month investigation and report by the UN found the videos to be authentic. Another report commissioned by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon further verified the findings, and demanded an investigation into the end of the war.”

Noting the degrading situation in the North-East he outlined,

“Since the films, and four years since the end of the war, the images still keep emerging of what happened in that tiny strip of land amongst those thousands of people and then prisoners. The Sri Lankan government's position that these videos are fake does not stand up to scrutiny. Our journalism has been subjected to incredible scrutiny and only the Sri Lankans have found it wanting.”

“In a post war Sri Lanka, journalists still disappear, or are threatened by government ministers to have their legs broken in public, people are picked up by the white vans and never seen again, and according to Human Rights Watch sexual violence by the army in the now occupied north is out of control.”