Wed Jun 20, 2012 11:45 pm (PDT)
Putting one's life on the line....Sevanti Ninan
Because it is an increasingly lawless country and because media competition pushes those who are sent to get the story to try harder, the risks are greater than before
India can be a rough country if you are practising something other than soft journalism. Last weekend's tragic death of a gifted young photographer from malaria and resulting complications has helped to focus attention on the risks and responsibilities.
Tarun Sehrawat worked for Tehelka and his death following an assignment in Abujmarh in Chhattisgarh has had colleagues in the profession raising issues of safety on the job and institutional structures that even the English language media has not put in place. The rougher things get in India, the more those covering the news will be at risk. They are the ones at the cutting edge of both big-city and district-level corruption, Naxalism, insurgency and much else.
Because it is an increasingly lawless country and because media competition pushes those who are sent to get the story to try harder, the risks are greater than before. Sehrawat's death has drawn attention, that of a mofussil journalist in Madhya Pradesh earlier this year has not. Looking at physical attacks so far this year shows in how many ways the tribe is vulnerable.
April alone saw three assaults on journalists and two attacks on media property. A Chhattisgarh journalist was attacked for exposing illegal forest felling, Nirmal Baba's supporters attacked journalists in Delhi, and railway staff manhandled a Navbharat Times reporter in Mumbai for clicking pictures of an illegal activity. In March, lawyers attacked journalists in Bangalore and in February a journalist in Cachar district was attacked for exposing corruption in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme work. In January, Manipur journalists were on a pen-down strike to protest continuous threats by militants. How do we even begin to protect such people?
Health hazards then were the last things anybody was looking at. As both Tehelka editor Shoma Chaudhury and CNN-IBN managing editor Vinay Tewari point out, when you are sending a journalist on assignment to Chhattisgarh, it is the Naxal threat that you are briefing them on. It's only on location that they will learn that malaria is equally a hazard.
Media may be a flourishing industry, but once you begin to look closer, particularly at the armies of news gatherers in the regional media, it becomes clear that it is an unorganized and exploitative one. In a country where the bulk of small-town journalists are unlikely to get proper appointment letters, expecting health and risk protection for this category of workers is a pipe dream. The highest circulated newspaper in the country says it employs around 5,000 journalists and 7,000-odd stringers. Can the latter, who don't even get salaries, expect any kind of hazard protection?
Journalism can be a safe profession or a dangerous one depending on the kind of journalism you do. Tehelka has come in for criticism following this tragedy but Chaudhury says you have to take a call based on the reasonable risk doctrine. "Anyone pushing the line a bit on what journalism is will run a risk." Can Indian news organizations prepare their staff better? She says no Delhi editor can assess adequately the risks associated with the local terrain, but Tehelka will now look at issuing standing instructions on reporters making contact with a local doctor and local reporters. It will also look at the issue of insurance for its journalists.
In terms of equipping, insuring and briefing journalists, the gap between the first and third worlds is huge. Indian journalism in parts may be on par with the best, but news organization culture in this respect lags far behind. The BBC's high-risk policy runs into 14 pages. It has a high-risk team which can brief teams going out on hazards in different parts of the world. But, says Chaudhury, "This was not some other part of the world. This is our backyard. We thought we knew it."
The Hindu editor Siddharth Varadarajan says it's clear that Indian media will have to institutionalize safe practices of different kinds. His paper gives open-ended medical insurance, CNN-IBN says it provides bullet-proof jackets to its entire bureau in Srinagar, including outdoor broadcasting engineers and video journalists. It has insurance for all newsroom staff and a corpus to cover news staff when accidents occur. But even so, CNN International is on another planet. They had an armoured personnel carrier for their journalists in Iraq!
When the war is in your backyard and you don't have the UK or the US budgets, you do other things. Varadarajan says that when the local police made things hot for their Chhattisgarh correspondent, he had to take up the matter with the chief minister. Both he and Tewari are also clear that safety comes before risk. The latter says CNN-IBN tells reporters to eschew the romanticism of capturing a face-covered Naxal on camera, because the risk may not be worth it. But, and here's the final point, a driven reporter is often more committed to the pursuit of a story than the editor. In the interests of safety, she has to be reined in.
Sevanti Ninan is a media critic, author and editor of the media watch website thehoot.org. She examines the larger issues related to the media in a fortnightly column.
No comments:
Post a Comment