Press News Narratives: Covering the Final Phase of the War in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The impact of the shock waves of thought sent by mass media through society, on the consciousness, mind, feelings, and behavior of individuals has been argued. The ethnic conflict has been given first priority in the national agenda of Sri Lanka for the last few decades. The role of the news media in the ethnic conflict is something that has not been identified. This study investigates whether the newspapers that targeted the Sinhala population which is the ethnic majority in Sri Lanka did perform professional news functions in covering the final phase of the war in Sri Lanka and what factors affected the situation. For this purpose, news professionalism theory, narratology theory, and structuralism theory were employed. In a society where conflicts occur based on ethnic diversity, this study found that newspapers that target the ethnic majority which possesses the monopoly, engage in covering war using the construction of narrative function instead of professional news reporting. The paper argues that the influence exercised upon the mentality of readers by narratives constructed by the news genre of newspapers in a society facing an armed conflict based on ethnic differences obstructs the ability to look at the ethnic conflict critically.

Keywords

• sri lanka
• ethnic conflict
• newspapers
• news professionalism
• narratives