The Island at forty

By Panduka Karunanayake

In a country steadily sliding downstream for six-and-a-half decades, The Island has been swimming upstream for four. As a reincarnation of our nation’s free press, it has borne its burden with the quiet fortitude of a doggedly-determined marathon runner. In a world of mushrooming problems and mindboggling fashions, it faces an especially fluid and uncertain future. This is therefore a good time to revisit its journey, reassess its status and reimagine its future. For, The Island is now no longer merely a newspaper; it is an institution, whose fate and future are inseparable from those of our nation itself.

Associated Newspapers (‘Lake House’), which was established in colonial 1918 and was once the vibrant voice of free expression, became the target of politico-attack in the 1960s and was eventually nationalised in 1973. The other defiant voice of that era, Independent Newspapers, born in 1964, had its press sealed and voice muted in 1974. The state radio had always belonged to the political party in power, and the private radio was still in the future. So, when The Island came into existence in 1981, it breathed fresh hope. Its main challenge then was to keep alive the familiar bravery and keep out the familiar fate.

The Island has always striven to tell all sides of the story. It hasn’t done this by running articles with a balanced view – because there is no such thing as a balanced view. Rather, it has unabashedly run highly polemic articles from all parties to a debate. Reading The Island from day to day was like following the ball in a tennis court, perched near the net. It struck its balance not with deceptively balanced articles, but by giving equal space to all sides of the story; the reader decided where the truth lay. Imagine what it must be like to make sense of a tennis game by looking to only one side of the net. That is what it would feel like, without The Island.

Often when meaningful debates of national importance took place, they did so on the pages of The Island. It was here that erudite scholars, experienced professionals and public intellectuals debated openly and with civility – about whether generic medications or branded medications were better, whether kidney disease in the north-central province was due to arsenic or cadmium or fluoride or hard water or something else, where the country’s energy or transport sector was heading, whether or not politicians were behind massive deforestations, whether university education should remain state-owned or go private, who was doing what in national cricket, and many more.

The secret of its richness of information and opinion is in its openness. Anyone who cared to write had a place in it – after all, one wrote because one cared, and that was enough reason to give one the space. We didn’t need to send our articles to the editor through ‘a friend’; instead, the friendship with the editor grew gradually over years of writing to its pages.

To me the most unique part of The Island is its Midweek Review. There is nothing else like it, even in academia. Sometimes the quality of its articles and the responses to them put academic peer review to shame. The information it carried, enriched with factual detail as well as real-life experiences of real people who had something worthwhile to say, made libraries look like nerdy closets. The growth to our thinking that it enabled over the years has made academic mentoring a farce. Because of it, Wednesday is my favourite day of the week.

When I was a schoolboy, my father used to buy the Ceylon Daily News just so that I could read its editorials and learn how to write well. Today, for that and for some enlightened entertainment, I read The Island editorial every day.

For all its bravery, brilliance and buoyancy, it is not without faults. It forgets to publish the second part of a serialised article. It sometimes misses the name of the author. It frequently betrays the look of a chaotic newspaper office. But somehow, we tend to love it more when we see these imperfections. What you see is what you get; what we are dealing with is actually human. So, we grumble and clench our fist, but then we forget and move on. It’s a bit like dealing with an incorrigible yet true friend.

But in an epoch when newspapers are evidently dying a slow death, the news is taken over by the news alert, and print paper is replaced by the touchscreen, where could The Island stand?

First and foremost, news is not what the news alert tells us. It is what professional journalists collect with an element of risk, painstakingly verify, compose into an article that says more than the sum of its words, and then offer to the discerning reader. To mistake the news alert for this whole process is to miss the whole idea of journalism. As long as there are discerning readers, therefore, there would be a place for newspapers like The Island. And as long as there are newspapers like The Island, discernment among readers would be preserved.

Secondly, the purpose of journalism even with regard to news and current affairs is not fully served until the commentary, the feature article and the editorial on the topic appear. The public involvement and the opinion piece are indispensable too. These show the woods from the trees. Recalling T.S. Eliot’s famous lament, that is how we find knowledge in the information, or wisdom in the knowledge.

All these can, of course, appear online too. The online format also gives us the advantage of the archived article. So, a newspaper can usefully go online, but it cannot go away.

But many of us still like the feel of real paper on our fingers, especially in the mornings, with its characteristic fragrance of ink on paper. And good newspapers can mesmerise us with imaginative page-setting and creative art work, much more than the dull, monotonous and ephemeral web page could. These are the strengths that a newspaper can utilise to face the future. And let’s not forget that reading a newspaper doesn’t need electricity or a charged battery. In fact, when electricity is down, it can even serve as a handy fan!

The Island has established itself as the preferred English language newspaper for the discerning local reader. It is the front-line platform for free expression for those who feel that they have something worthwhile to share. It has therefore established for itself a permanent place in the public intellect – the hallmark of graduating from news-selling to journalism. It maintains high standards of independent, level-headed journalism. It offers the best commentary and academic reflection that our intellectuals can produce. It is a vibrant forum of discussion, debate and learning. It carries the best editorials in the English language, hitting the nail on the head with class and composure. All this is a lot to achieve in forty years. Upali Wijewardene may not have become the president he wanted to be, but he has given something more valuable to our democracy than any president did. Well done!

Of course, it can improve its ways: while the substance is top-rate, the delivery can be better. It must change to suit the future too: it must seek out its niche in a disappearing market and a maze of options. It must navigate between disappearing because of the cyberspace and disappearing into it.

The discerning readers have a lot to thank The Island for. We are glad to have it in our journey as a nation. So, let me bring their gratitude, best wishes and solidarity, and wish it well – for many more decades of priceless, exemplary service to our island nation.

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The writer is a professor in clinical medicine in the University of Colombo, and has been a frequent writer in The Island for fifteen years.