I was quite pleased when my recent piece about Sri Lanka's chairmanship of the Commonwealth earned me a present. The pleasure evaporated quickly enough, however. My benefactor was a lobbying outfit called Engage Sri Lanka; the gift a 222-page polemic, Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka. There is much about the book that is opaque, including the identity of its authors, but the purpose underlying its publication is transparent enough: to rubbish Channel 4 News for its coverage of Sri Lanka, in particular for two documentaries it has made about the final months of the long war against the Tamil Tigers.