Watch the media guru - week after week
The new program on the media scene, called 'Sathiyen Sathiya' is Sarath Amunugama's brand new offering to the people via Rupavahini. There, Amunugama plays the role of media suspect, prosecutor judge and executioner. He takes stacks of newspapers with him, and wears the hat of media pundit with such abandon that he almost forgets he is but a politician and not the Competent Authority anymore. (Ah that, that's Amunugama';s previous media incarnation.)

Amunugama then takes newspapers, and shows front page pictures of Lakshman Kadirgamar. He says, "its good these people are carrying pictures of Kadrgamar instead of me; I am now stale having been the PA spokesman but Kadrigamar is relatively a fresh face.''

We have to agree with that. So stale, he should have thought twice about launching a new TV program with himself in the middle of it. Don't blame me, he said he is stale, not me?

Amunugama gets up in the morning, and first he looks for which hat he should wear. Is it my media hat, is it my academic hat or is it my I-think-I-will-be-Minister-very-soon hat. But then when he gets out of the house his multiple personalities become positively difficult to contain. Ok, he has decided he is going to be media man for the day. But then more questions surface for him as the day wears on -- like rubber balls bobbing up in a swimming pool. Am I going to be State media man today? Am I going to be UPFA media man today? Or am I going to be the all purpose media analyst? Am I going to be just media observer, or the media itself?

On Wednesdays Amunugama is the media itself. He is only the spokesman you might say. But then, he is the media and the message because his message had to be carried over the state media -- that's not by choice, but by right. So he is the media, the messenger, and the analyst. It goes one better than being prosecutor judge and executioner, but Amunugama loves bouncing his hats around. One day he is Censor. Next day he is free media champion. Come to think of it has been the story of his life.

Amunugama, you guessed, knows everything about the media. He says that a lot of the political commentary in Sri Lankan newspapers is in fact gossip. Then he proceeds to do the political analysis himself. Amunugama never spouts gossip, he spouts propaganda. How refreshing.

Amunugama's media analysis straddles the gamut. He talks of fly in the wall journalism -- and I swear, you would have thought these profundities about journalism makes him a newspaper colossus. But maybe they make him a fly in the wall media analyst. Why not. He says fly in the wall journalists want to show the public they were there at some closed door political event. And a fly in the wall media analyst says everything about the state owned media as if he was there on the wall. Why not? He is there after all - he is the state media, give or take a few Editors and messengers in-between. Not just the fly in the wall, if he keeps going at this rate, he will be its fly in the ointment as well….

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