Agriculture Minister K.D. Lal Kantha has accused two private media channels of deliberately distorting statements by government representatives instead of reporting national policy accurately, speaking at a public event.
The two institutions had repeatedly taken his remarks out of context and presented them in a way that invited criticism of himself, the Ministry Secretary and the government, he alleged, the Daily Mirror reported.
The minister compared the conduct of the two institutions to that of thugs, and said the public was becoming increasingly aware of how they reported statements by government representatives.
The remark at the centre of it
The complaint follows criticism of Lal Kantha’s recent statement that Sri Lanka does not need to increase the extent of land currently used for paddy cultivation.
He said that position was based on scientific assessments and the country’s actual agricultural requirements, but that the two channels had presented it as unreasonable rather than examining the facts behind it. He accused them of sensationalising and distorting statements instead of informing the public about broader agricultural policy and national priorities.
The Daily Mirror does not reproduce the original paddy-land statement, give the occasion on which it was made, or set out the scientific assessments the minister says underpin it.
The channels are not named
Neither institution is identified in the report. That matters, because it leaves the accusation unanswerable in print — no broadcaster can respond to it, and readers cannot judge the claim of distortion against what was actually aired.
It also means this filing cannot be tied to the minister’s earlier disputes with broadcasters. Lal Kantha has taken formal action against a television channel before: in April 2026 the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka said it would consider a complaint he submitted calling for an investigation into a channel for allegedly breaching frequency licence conditions on a continuing basis, as NewsFirst reported at the time. Whether either of Thursday’s unnamed channels is the same broadcaster is not reported, and LankaNewz has not established a link.
A pattern worth marking
Ministerial complaints about distortion by private broadcasters are a recurring genre in Sri Lankan politics rather than a discrete event, and the headline shape repeats across years and ministers. What distinguishes this instance is the specific trigger — the paddy acreage statement — and the “thugs” comparison. It should not be matched against earlier filings on the strength of the headline alone.
Separately, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation complained to the Ministry of Mass Media about a broadcaster in April over a report on crude oil pricing it called false and damaging — a different complainant and a different subject, noted here only to show how often this dispute recurs between state bodies and private channels.
Not reported
The report gives no response from either channel, does not say whether the minister intends to lodge a formal complaint with any regulator, and does not state where or when he was speaking beyond “a public event”. It gives no detail of the agricultural analysis behind the paddy-land position, which is the substantive question underneath the dispute.
This report rests on a single verified newsroom. No account of the minister’s remarks had appeared on Hiru News, NewsFirst, Ada Derana, EconomyNext, the Island or Daily FT at the time of writing.
