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When news becomes a commodity

Man from Sri Lanka

As soon as the loud explosion was heard at an Air Force base adjacent to the Sri Lanka's international airport, the international and local news vultures began to tear apart the carcass of truth. They were having a field day in fabricating some sensational news from gossips and rumours whatever they could lay their hands on, merely, to earn a few dollars. Words crunching is the name of the game and most of them are paid by the number of words.

According to the new monitored in London, it was the Washington Post website who published it first with a highly speculative report;

Sri Lanka says airport under suspected rebel attack
Reuters Sunday, March 25, 2007; 4:15 PM COLOMBO (Reuters) - Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels attacked Sri Lanka's international airport north of the capital Colombo before dawn on Monday, the military said, and witnesses who live nearby told Reuters they could hear gunfire.

The Toronto Star and msnbc still keep the original report as it received. (http://www.thestar.com/News/article/195894 25/03/07)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17787069/
'

BBC did not loose any time to supplement the previous reporting with their own

"Gun battle' at Colombo airport
Reports from Sri Lanka say that the international airport in the capital Colombo has come under attack by suspected Tamil Tiger rebels. Witnesses have reported hearing the sound of gunfire and explosions. A spokesman for the Sri Lankan military told the Reuters news agency that fighting was continuing at the airport The airport was attacked in July 2001 by Tamil Tiger rebels who destroyed six civilian jets, along with over a dozen military aircraft at a base next door. (BBC - 25/03/07)


(http://www.thestar.com/News/article/195894 25/03/07)
Sri Lanka reports airport under rebel attack
Mar 25, 2007 05:48 PM
REUTERS

COLOMBO - Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels attacked Sri Lanka's international airport north of the capital Colombo before dawn on Monday, the military said, and witnesses who live nearby told Reuters they could hear gunfire.
"There is an attack going on , but we don't have any details," said Flight Lieutenant Kanista Rajapakse of the Media Centre for National Security. "There is fighting going on."
The attack comes in the wake of a series of deadly land and sea battles and amid an escalating new chapter in the island's two-decade civil war, which has killed around 68,000 people since 1983.
"I can hear gunfire from near the airport," said R.M. Gunasekera, an accountant who lives near the town of Katunayake around 37 kilometres north of Colombo, where the airport is situated.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) last attacked the airport in 2001, the year before a ceasefire deal which has since collapsed on the ground, in which half of the Sri Lankan airlines fleet of airplanes was destroyed.
President Mahinda Rajapakse's government aims to defeat the Tigers militarily within 2-3 years, and is pushing on with military offensives in the east and north despite pleas from the international community to stop.
The rebels, who are battling for an independent state for minority Tamils in the island's north and east, have warned of a bloodbath and analysts say a new chapter in a two-decade war that has killed around 4,000 troops, civilians and Tigers in the past 15 months alone is spreading.



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