- Another cause of death, apart from murder
By: Nava Thakuria
Journalism remains a dangerous profession with Indian scribes facing various physical, professional or medical emergencies. India loses a number to assailants every year. In addition, many scribes routinely face retrenchments, arbitrary redundancy and humiliation in their workplaces. As the media fraternity has largely lost its credibility and earned brickbats from the masses, the Covid-19 pandemic emerged as a severe health hazard for it.
India has lost more media persons to the coronavirus than to violence since January. Thousands of journalists were infected as they were playing the role of corona-warriors along with doctors, nurses, sanitation workers, police personnel and others. Casualties within the media fraternity because of covid-19 now mount every day.
Lately the country lost five prominent journalists to Covid-19 within ten days. The latest victim has surfaced from Agra where senior journalist Ami Adhar Nidar, 50, died on September 19. Associated with the highly circulated Hindi Dainik Jagaran, he was hospitalized after he tested positive.
The previous day, Anil Srivastava, 68, of the United News of India, from Basti in Jammu succumbed to Covid-19 complications. On 18 September itself, Jabalpur-based Harish Choubey, 60, of the widely circulated Hindi newspaper Dainik Bhaskar, died in hospital after testing positive. Similarly, Sirsa paper Sach Kahoon’s Abohar-based Punjab journalist, Naresh Bajaj, 57, died on September 10. Ravinder Kumar, 30, from Una in Himachal Pradesh, of Dainik Jagaran, died on the way to hospital after developing symptoms on September 9.
When the scribes and media workers tested positive, no media outlet revealed its employees were also infected. But what would have been wrong, if the editors named their employees as social responsibilities! After all, testing positive for covid-19 is quite a normal phenomenon (and no matter of shame)
Lately, Assam in northeast India, also witnessed two Covid-19 journo-victims. Udalguri-based Dhaneswar Rabha, 35, died in Guwahati on September 6. Rabha had renal problems, undergoing regular dialysis. Next day, senior journalist Ashim Dutta, 65, died in Silchar. He worked for a Bengali daily in Barak valley, and also had kidney problems.
Earlier, Mumbai based senior film-journalist Shyam Sarma, Nellore (Andhra Pradesh) based Narayanam Seshacharyulu, Pune-based television reporter Pandurang Raikar, Kanpur-based television journalist Neelanshu Shukla, Patiala-based photojournalist Jai Deep, Tirupati-based television reporter Madhusudan Reddy and videojournalist M Parthasarathy succumbed. So did television reporter Ramanathan and news videographer E Velmurugan from Chennai, news presenter Davinder Pal Singh from Chandigarh, television scribe Manoj Kumar from Hyderabad, print-journalist Pankaj Kulashrestha from Agra, and Orissa’s journalists Simanchal Panda, K Ch Ratnam & Priyadarshi Patnaik.
Kolkata photojournalist Ronny Roy was the first Indian scribe to die. New Delhi scribe Tarun Sisodia killed himself undergoing Covid-19 treatment at AIIMS. Maharashtra’s veteran journalist Ashok Churi, who edited Marathi weekly PalgharTimes, died at a Palghar hospital. The printer-publisher of Asomiya Khabar (Rantu Das) also died at a Guwahati hospital.
Meanwhile, seven journalists were murdered in separate incidents this year. The last depressing news broke from Uttar Pradesh, where Ratan Singh of the Hindi news channel Sahara Samay was killed by his neighbours in Phephna, Ballia locality on August 24. UP CM Yogi Adityanath announced Rs 10 lakh as ex-gratia and the police promptly arrested those suspected.
Earlier, a young Assamese scribe was murdered on August 8 at his rented office in Tinsukia, eastern Assam. Bijendeep Tanti, 32, of a private channel (NewsTimeAssam), also ran a facebook portal DinPratidinNortheast. He was found dead with severe neck injuries. The police have arrested the main accused, a lady who has reportedly confessed.
Earlier, Madhya Pradesh journalist Sunil Tiwari, 35, who worked for a Gwalior-based Hindi newspaper, was beaten, stabbed and shot in Niwari while returning home on the evening of 22 July, by a group of criminals. The police arrested a few individuals against whose activities Tiwari wrote.
The Same day, UP journalist Vikram Joshi, 45, died in a Ghaziabad hospital. Joshi, who worked for local newspaper Jan Sagar Today, was attacked on July 20 by a group of goons who shot at him in front of his two minor daughters after he had lodged a police complaint against some local criminals for eve-teasing. The police arrested nine suspects.
a digital channel reporter of Andhra Pradesh was murdered at Nandigama locality on June 29. Ganta Naveen, 27, developed enmity with some influential persons in his locality. They are suspected to organized the crime. The police arrested eight. Another news portal reporter, from Orissa, Aditya Kumar Ransingh, 40, was killed on February 16 in Banki. The police arrested two criminals with whom he maintained bitter relations.
The brutal murder of Shubham Mani Tripathi, 25, from UP shocked the media society as he continued to report against illegal sand miners even after receiving anonymous death threats. He worked for Kanpur-based Hindi daily Kampu Mail, and was shot dead in Brahmanagar, Unnao, on June 19 by two shooters as he was returning home on a two-wheeler. The police arrested three.
The pandemic has however crashed the mainstream media industry. Worried owners have already stopped publishing hundreds of physical newspapers and surviving managements closed down editions in different localities, cut pages, went to cut salaries and even laid off employees including senior journalists, citing shrinking advertisement revenues. Only a few could raise voices against this and the rest continues to carry on with humiliations in workplaces.
When hundreds of journalists in Guwahati too tested positive for Covid-19, the concerned newspapers, news channels and news portals tried to avoid making news out of this. Some infected mediapersons however made personal revelations in social media. Various organizations criticized the media outlets for their selective reporting of this, arguing that they continue identifying other Covid-19 affectees by name and photograph, but remain silent for their employees.
What is amazing that Assam (read State health minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma), unlike the other Indian provinces, used to name all individuals who turned Covid-19-positive and the local media outlets used the entire information. The logic behind this was that one should be publicly named and photographed after testing positive for Covid-19 to make others who came in contact with the concerned individual in the last few days take necessary precautions. It was termed as a social responsibility.
But when the scribes and media workers tested positive, no media outlet revealed its employees were also infected. But what would have been wrong, if the editors named their employees as social responsibilities! After all, testing positive for covid-19 is quite a normal phenomenon (and no matter of shame). Rather, the editors could have done it as a matter of pride, saying their employees got infected while working in the pandemic.
The author is a northeast India-based journalist and media activist
