Friday, September 11, 2009 18:04 Mecca time, 15:04 GMT The Sri Lankan media war continues

Watch Part 2 In May the Sri Lankan Army defeated the seperatist Tamil Tigers in a military push that left 20,000 civilians in the last month of fighting alone. The Listening Post has previously reported on how the Sri Lankan government prevented most of the media from entering the the war zone. UN human rights groups and journalists are working to uncover the truth about the last bloody days of the battle. A disturbing video has surfaced that appears to show cold-blooded executions. The video has provoked an immediate response from the Sri Lankan government and a fight over the veracity of the footage is being waged all the way from the capital, Colombo, to London. To name or not to name Salah Khadr delves into the world of online anonymity and looks at particular cases that have raised the question of whether it is a good thing. A model in New York recently criticised someone, who responded by setting up an anonymous blog and maligned the model online. The model in turn then took Google to court in a successful effort to force the company into reveal the blogger’s identity. The blogger is now threatening to take Google back to court for revealing who she was. The argument itself was petty, but the ruling has implications that go far beyond the individual case and could affect the rights of all bloggers to anonymity. Painfully funny Finally, The American website The Onion deals in what it calls fake news. It started out spoofing newspapers and has since taken on TV news. The Onion’s satirical approach to serious news stories and the way they are handled in the media can be remarkably close to the mark. Now they are satirising the US torture debate in the news media. In order to point out how ridiculous they think some of the arguments are the Onion has simply replaced a military interrogator with a mythological 11 foot tall half-man, half-bovine beast. It will all make more sense by watching our web video of the week. http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/listeningpost/2009/09/2009911133626307252.html -----------------------------------------------------------------------