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Editorial: Journalists under witness protection

Last week, journalists Maria Ressa from the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov from Russia were honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize, for their efforts in upholding the principles of free speech and fact-based reportage.

Editorial: Journalists under witness protection
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Noble prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa. File photo

Chennai

Ressa is a staunch critic of the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte who launched a controversial anti-drug campaign which saw thousands of citizens, accused of drug abuse being gunned down in cold blood. Her compatriot in this victory Muratov is the founder of an independent Russian newspaper, which has been critical of the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin’s heavy handed policies, and has witnessed the death of six of the newspaper’s reporters, killed in the line of duty.

The announcement of the Peace Prize is telling, when considered in the context of India. Two weeks ago, a vernacular media journalist was killed in Lakhimpur Kheri, UP, while covering the farmers’ protest. Raman Kashyap was run over by a convoy of SUVs, one of them allegedly being driven by a union minister’s son, who had rammed into a group of farmers involved in peaceful agitations. The incident should make our blood boil, not just as members of the media, but even as citizens of an independent nation. But this time, many shrugged off the incident as yet another casualty of truth, as other more ‘prominent’ developments like the arrest of a star son for alleged drug abuse, grabbed centre-stage.

And it is exactly such indifference that the Nobel Peace Prize intends to dismantle. As many as 40 journalists have been murdered in India, between the years 1992 and 2021, as per the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 2020 alone, at least 30 journalists were killed globally, of which 21 were “singled out for murder in retaliation for their work”. The number of murdered journalists has doubled from last year’s figure of 10. Of these, two of the fatalities were Indian. The report added that politics was the most dangerous beat in 2020, and criminal groups were the most frequently suspected killers of journalists. It further cements the adage that journalism is printing what someone else does not want published; everything else is public relations.

This escalation in attacks on scribes is a fallout of the failure of the global community to confront such acts carried out with impunity. Journalists today face threats from multiple corners. On one side, there are authoritarian governments who do not want to be criticised or called out, no matter how bad things get on the political front. And if a journalist or a newspaper group dares to raise its voice, it will be bombarded by smear campaigns as well as ‘out of the blue raids’ by income tax officials which can cripple companies without deep pockets.

In a recent interview, the editor of a popular news portal said being summoned with legal notices every few weeks, and flying reporters in and out of cities for litigation is a recipe to run your portal into bankruptcy. And it’s the modus operandi employed by those with the political firepower. The other scourge is that of misinformation, propagated by behemoths working in social media today. The groundbreaking revelations made by a former product manager at Facebook gave us a deeper understanding of how the company prioritised user engagement at all costs on the platform, even if that interaction was driven by violent, false narratives.

Journalists must not be penalised for doing their jobs. If India believes it must lead the rest of the world by the example of its pluralism and democracy, then it must put in place legislation that guarantees journalists the freedom to work without the fear of retribution. In the absence of such measures, journalism, and democracy, in the long run, might have to enter a witness protection programme, every time the need to speak the truth arises.

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