ABSTRACT
In Sri Lanka, the judiciary and journalism have found it hard to break free from ideologies of preference and exclusion towards which the power of the nascent post-colonial state had been directed. As the state, by the 1980s, became increasingly embroiled in social unrest and civil war, the judiciary ceased to provide the comfort zone behind which the press could take refuge. It was in the last leg of the civil war, 2006–2009, when the press tried to interrogate power as equals that it was violently rebuffed. With the political climate uncertain, this fear remains. Those in power have got used to manipulating the judiciary to such an extent that little help will come from that quarter to support the Fourth Estate as a check on tyranny.
