• Defeat the reactionary attitude of journalists who welcome the CIMP Bill

The silence and in many cases, the open enthusiasm of institutionalised journalists toward the Chartered Institute of Media Professionals (CIMP) Bill is a political scandal that must be exposed. Rather than recognising the Bill as a direct assault on their own democratic rights, a significant layer of established media professionals has greeted it as an opportunity for personal advancement. They see in the Institute not a cage, but a club: A State-operated institution that will certify their professional status, distinguish them from the unwashed masses of ‘content developers’ and social media commentators, and  most importantly,  open the door to the material privileges that State recognition can confer. Pensions. Insurance schemes. Bank loans at preferential rates. Foreign visa facilitation. Access to Government advertising and contracts. A seat at the table with the powerful.

This is the outlook not of defenders of press freedom but of a privileged petite-bourgeois stratum seeking to secure its position through collaboration with the State. It is the mentality of the courtier, not the journalist.

The bribe and the chain

On 17 February, the Deputy Mass Media Minister Dr  Kaushalya Ariyarathna of the National People’s Power/Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna Government told Parliament that the Government would establish a chartered institution to promote journalists’ job security, professionalism, health insurance and welfare, and that it would continue the scholarship schemes. 

The Government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is not offering these inducements out of generosity. It is executing a classic strategy of bourgeois statecraft: buy off a strategic layer of the profession, bind their material interests to the survival of the regime, and in doing so, fragment any potential opposition to the throttling of democratic rights. The journalist who today receives a State-certified accreditation, a facilitated bank loan, or a Government pension scheme becomes, tomorrow, a hostage. The same State that grants these privileges can revoke them and under the CIMP Bill, the mechanism for revocation is already built into the architecture. Section 24 empowers the Council to “dis-enroll any member” for “professional misconduct”, a term left deliberately undefined in Section 23(2), to be filled in later by rules made by the same Council. The journalist who believes that they are securing a pension is in fact putting their head in a noose.

This is not hypothetical. We have seen this dynamic play out repeatedly. In 2023, the Government Medical Officers’ Association — the trade Union of doctors — agreed to Government censorship of its own members’ communications, demonstrating how professional associations function as the industrial police for the Government and corporations. The Union bureaucrats who negotiate such arrangements secure their own positions at the expense of the rights of their members. The CIMP Bill extends this model to journalism: create a Chartered body, staff it with compliant figures, and use it to discipline the profession from within.

The class character of the betrayal

The journalists who welcome the CIMP Bill are not acting out of ignorance. They are acting out of class interest. The interest of a privileged layer that fears the independent mobilisation of the working class and the unregulated democratic discourse of the internet more than it fears State censorship. The mainstream corporate media is already tightly controlled by oligarchs and the State. Its senior practitioners have long since made their peace with power. What terrifies them is not the Government’s repression but the rise of independent online media, the bloggers, the social media commentators, the YouTubers, the citizen journalists, and the socialist publications, who operate outside the established hierarchies of the profession and who give voice to working-class anger against International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity, privatisation, and imperialist war.

The CIMP Bill, by bringing “content developers” under the disciplinary apparatus of the State, promises to eliminate this competition. For the institutionalised journalist, the Bill is not a threat to press freedom. It is a moat around their professional castle. They will be certified. Their rivals will be dis-enrolled. The democratic right of free expression will be converted into a licensed privilege, and they will be among the license-holders.

This is a reactionary posture of the most dangerous kind. It is the same mentality that led the trade union bureaucracy to suppress strikes by postal workers, electricity workers, and health workers — sacrificing the interests of the broader working class to preserve their own positions within the State apparatus. It is the mentality of the labour aristocracy, the privileged stratum that imperialism cultivates in the colonial and semi-colonial countries to serve as a transmission belt for the dictates of finance capital.

A trap, not a shelter

The journalists who imagine that they will benefit from the CIMP Bill are deluding themselves. The State that grants privileges can withdraw them. The Interim Council appointed by the Mass Media Minister, consisting of the Mass Media Ministry Secretary and six political nominees, will write the rules that define “professional misconduct.” Those rules will not be written to protect the integrity of journalism. They will be written to silence the criticism of the Government. The journalist who accepts accreditation today may find themselves dis-enrolled tomorrow for reporting on a strike, exposing a corruption scandal, or publishing an article critical of the IMF program. The pension, the bank loan, and the visa facilitation all will vanish the moment that the journalist steps out of line.

The only reliable guarantee of press freedom is not a State-issued certificate of professionalism. It is the organised power of the working class. The journalists who seek to insulate themselves from State repression by collaborating with the State will find that they have merely made themselves more vulnerable to it. They will have traded their independence for a mess of pottage, and they will be devoured in due course.

Journalists must ally with the working class

Those who may have initially viewed the CIMP Bill as an opportunity for professional advancement, should try to break decisively from this reactionary orientation. The fight against the CIMP Bill is not a fight for the privileges of a professional elite. It is a fight for the democratic rights of the entire working class, of all the content creators. Journalists cannot defend their right to publish by seeking patronage from the capitalist State. They can only defend it by allying themselves with the class that has the power to overthrow that State.

Reject the bribe. The Government’s promise of insurance, pensions, loans, and visas is the price of your chains. No material inducement is worth the surrender of press freedom.

Break from the institutionalised journalists who are collaborating with the State. Their professionalism is a cover for class betrayal. They do not speak for journalism they speak for their own careers.

For the unity of journalists with the working class. The fight for press freedom is inseparable from the fight against IMF austerity, against imperialist war, and for the socialist reorganisation of the society, to fight for the right to publish without interference. 

Freedom of the press is a right, not a privilege. The pen that serves the State will be broken by the State. The pen that serves the working class will be defended by the working class. Journalists must choose which side they are on.

The writer is an attorney

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The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication