By Shelton Gunaratne, professor of mass communications emeritus
Minnesota State University Moorhead, USA
Asian communication specialists debated the issue of de-Westernizing social science theory and research at a gathering in Taipei, Taiwan, in mid-December last year. Their contributions will appear in a special issue of the Asian Journal of Communication this year.
This gathering propelled my thoughts on revolutionizing news and journalism into higher ontological levels. It occurred to me that Sri Lanka, as a component of the world-system, could challenge the dominant (Western) model of news and journalism and its permutations by adopting a normative model based on Theravada Buddhist principles and demonstrating its applicability across the boundaries from the periphery (developing countries) to the center (developed countries). Presuming that globalization is an indicator of the system’s unique property called emergence, the current direction of the pattern of influence is from the center to the periphery. However, the principle of diversity (yin) within unity (yang) ensures varying degrees of hybridity in anything that moves along the global pathways.
Buddhist principles have universal applicability because they are not divine dictates but explicit and practical morals of human communication. American journalist Doug McGill says that a journalism grounded in Buddhist morals would produce (1) a journalism of healing because the goal of Buddhism is achieving the end of “suffering,” which connotes many facets of existence, and (2) a journalism of timely, truthful, and helpful speech based on the Noble Eightfold Path. Because Sri Lanka is emerging from the ravages of a long-drawn war with the Tamil Tigers, this is the time for the state, as well as all newspaper editors and publishers, to give serious thought to applying Buddhist principles to news and journalism.
