10th Parliament· 154 sittings on record · 30,475 speeches · latest 10 June 2026

The Hon. Dharmapriya Dissanayake

Jathika Jana balawegaya· Kurunegala· 17 February 2026 ·Oral question: Oral Question: Media Institutions and Support for Journalists (Q.9/2025)

Justice & Human Rights
AI summary generated by gpt-5.5

Hon. Dharmapriya Dissanayake raised concerns about private media institutions, noting alleged ethical breaches, misconduct complaints, and journalists facing unpaid dues for long periods. He asked whether the Government has a programme to protect private-sector journalists affected by media outlet closures and the absence of redress.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, my first supplementary is about private media institutions although my main question was on state media. There are many issues faced by journalists in private media. Some present information improperly due to payments from their private channels. In our area, complaints have been lodged against certain journalists for conduct inconsistent with institutional culture. Media institutions should have ethics, but some breach them. We believe journalists in private media face serious problems, including not receiving payments for 10–12 years for their services, and some outlets have now closed with no redress for them. Does the Government have any programme to protect these journalists in the current wave of closures?

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Tuesday, 17 February 2026 ·No. 23279 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
Page · column
not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
Permalink
/lk/speeches/5817

Cite as: The Hon. Dharmapriya Dissanayake. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 17 February 2026. No. 23279. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/5817