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Here we go again!

We would have been content to let our comment last week, replying to a Daily News attack on this newspaper, rest where it was. But that is not to be because the Daily News, abandoning the issue it opened with a preposterous story on the "symbolic opening" of a string of projects in the south that would cost billions of dollars, chose to attack us on something entirely different the very next day.

This time it has accused us of "blatant lying and twisting of the truth" on an entirely different subject - our May 2 front-page piece on the Central Bank's 1998 report. The same technique of suggestio falsi, suppresso veri that it used on the previous occasion has been clumsily resorted to once again. Some people, it seems, can never learn.

It is perfectly correct that we carried the Agence France Presse (AFP) report on the subject under the headline "Worst economic crisis in 60 years - CB" (meaning Central Bank). According to the Daily News, this gave readers the impression that the country's economy was experiencing its worst crisis in 60 years. The suppresso veri came in there. Right above the headline, in very big letters placed in a tinted box for added prominence, we also said: "Fared `reasonably well" despite daunting challenges."

We make no apologies for carrying the AFP report which concisely highlighted certain aspects in the Central Bank report. It was as usual professionally done by the agency's Colombo Bureau and the opening paragraph which read: "Sri Lanka's economy was facing the worst crisis since the 1930s but yet fared `reasonably well' to record a sharply lower growth rate of 4.7% last year, the Central Bank said."

That intro was taken off a paragraph quoted verbatim from the very first page of the Central Bank report which read: "Survival in a sea of turbulence became an achievement and the Sri Lanka economy could be deemed to have fared reasonably well during the biggest crisis it faced since the 1930s." So what was the Central Bank saying? That there was a sea of turbulence (Asian economic crisis and other global events) in which survival was by itself an achievement. In such an environment Sri Lanka's economy had fared reasonably well. That was faithfully and clearly reported.

There is absolutely no cause for anyone who looks objectively at the headline and the strap and what appeared below to say there was lying and twisting as the Daily News has done. What was the headline of the Sunday Times that very same weekend? "May Day distress signal from CB" and below that a sub-headline "Economic crisis looming: budget deficit up, growth rate down."

The Daily News editor not so long ago burnt his fingers by calling AFP's Colombo correspondent unpatriotic. Since he's been told what not to do, he doesn't want to repeat that performance by damning AFP or its Colombo bureau which produced the report we used so he proceeds to bluster on using words like "despicable canard" to damn the report for which he pontifically says the "editor of the Sunday island has to take the full responsibility." Sure. We have no problem in taking responsibility for a perfectly objective report from a respected news agency that we carried. Nobody has complained about it.

But we would like to ask the editor of the Daily News whether he takes "full responsibility" for the recent front page statement in the Daily News to which we drew attention through an Island Capers paragraph. Remember? It wasn't even a month ago when the Daily News said: "Meanwhile, Divaina yesterday published a press release issued by the UNP General Secretary Gamini Athukorale which forced the government to remove the deputy minister who gave protection for the soldier connected with the (G.C. Wickramasinghe kidnap) case."

As far as the country is concerned no deputy minister was removed for anything connected with the G.C. Wickramasinghe case. We don't know whether the editor of the Daily News takes responsibility for this "absolute canard," this "despicable canard" if we may borrow the words he has so lavishly spread in his May 10 editorial which has todate not been corrected. His problem was that we had touched a raw nerve the previous day. No less than Mr. Thilan Wijesinghe, the head of the BOI, had publicly said that the Daily News report on the four billion dollars that were allegedly being spent in the south was "false and misleading." That is why the Daily News, a whole week after the report, indulged in some belated mischief in an attempt to slam this newspaper.

We read Mr. Editor's front page splash yesterday about another journalist with great interest. We make no pronouncements on the truth or otherwise of what was said there for the simple reason that we do not know. But we do remember another time after Richard de Zoysa's murder what a famous (or rather infamous) Lankapuwath report had to say about the victim of that foul deed. We don't want to repeat the muck that was said there. We offer no prizes for guessing who the then editor of Lankapuwath was. Those with long memories might even remember a BBC interview where U No Hoo said it was written "under instructions!"

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