Sri Lanka doc highlights wider storytelling imbalance

The Sri Lanka's Killing Fields documentary which was shown late at night on Channel 4 was truly shocking. It is rare that such images are shown on mainstream television.

And one might reflect that it was only because the victims were foreigners from a faraway and poor country that they were shown at all.

The film contained shaky footage of the atrocities carried out against the Tamil population in the final months of the civil war in 2009. During those months, tens of thousands were killed - although for obvious reasons the numbers are imprecise. At the time, the Sri Lankan government very effectively banned all journalists, and for years the story has remained untold because no-one was there to bear witness.

The denouement for the Tamils came at the same time as the Israeli attack on Gaza, where the death toll was only a fraction (under 2,000) but the media noise was loud and vociferous. It was impossible to keep journalists away from Gaza and, despite difficulties, they told the story and continued to cover the consequences. In Sri Lanka, the absence of journalists meant that the story barely surfaced and it has taken painstaking work by Channel 4 to reveal what happened.

It is worth drawing some lessons for the events now unfolding in Syria. Journalists are banned and the information is patchy, but at least there are alternative means of finding out what is happening. In 2008-09, there was much less scope for social media and citizen journalism, especially in a location like northern Sri Lanka.

Yet the problem remains that there is an imbalance between those places where the story can be properly told with reliable pictures and those that ban independent journalism. Simply because we have the tools of storytelling - plenty of images and good access - does not make a story more significant. If we forget this, then in years to come there may be other 'Killing Field' revelations which show that contemporary journalistic priorities were misleading and distorted.

Suzanne Franks is Senior Lecturer and Director of Research at the Centre for Journalism, University of Kent.