| Title | MIRROR |
| Brand | WIJAYA NEWS PAPERS LIMITED |
| Product / Service | NEWS PAPER |
| Category | A02. Use of Magazines/Newspapers |
| Entrant | SARVA INTEGRATED Colombo, SRI LANKA |
| Entrant Company | SARVA INTEGRATED Colombo, SRI LANKA |
| Advertising Agency | SARVA INTEGRATED Colombo, SRI LANKA |
| Name | Company | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Chrishantha Jayasinghe | Sarva Integrated Pvt) Ltd | Managing Director |
| Prageeth Prasanjaya | Sarva Integrated/Pvt) Ltd | Creative Director |
| Suresh Jayaweera | Sarva Integrated Pvt) Ltd | Operations Director |
| Saroj Silva | Sarva Integrated Pvt) Ltd | Associate Creative Director |
| Tony Samidon | Sarva Integrated Pvt) Ltd | Media Manager |
| Sajith Silva | Sarva Integrated Pvt) Ltd | Assistant Media Manager |
Most of Sri Lanka’s morning programs on TV and Radio featured the front page and aired the content. The airtime generated on this day alone exceeded USD 68,000, with over 60 minutes of free airtime. This in turn encouraged people to go and purchase the newspapers, which were sold out before 10 am. By evening the unique ‘Mirror page’ was gaining attention on the web with people sharing articles & pictures, and journalists blogging about the advertisements. Even one of India’s highest selling newspaper The Hindustan Times, acclaimed Daily Mirror on its courageous effort to stand up for press freedom.
Using the concept of the mirror itself, the newspaper was approached to print the cover page as a ‘mirrored page’ including the logo, the mastheads, advertisements and all news contents. The only line that was easily legible was “Only true freedom of the press can turn things the right way around” and if a reader wanted to read the content on the front cover they had to hold the page to a mirror and read the reflection which had been turned the other way around
Sri Lanka’s media freedom has deteriorated to the point of being ranked as one of the worst 15 countries for media freedom by Reporters Without Borders. Amnesty International estimates over 15 journalists have been killed since 2006. The Sri Lankan public knew of the censorship taking place, yet the gravity of the issue was also censored from them. Daily Mirror, the most read English daily in the country, wanted to drive attention to the issue on World Media Freedom day and strengthen its image as a dependable, independent news provider. With news being censored, media companies being threatened and journalists being killed, achieving media freedom meant the situation in the country had to be turned around completely. Since the Daily Mirror reflects on the news of the country, the insight was that if a mirror cannot reflect properly, then the images are distorted, just like the news in the country