Mixed bag for media in pandemic times
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: May 08, 2021 -

UNDER normal circumstances, every journalist feels elated by a few lines of praises and acknowledgement of their role in disseminating vital information to the citizens but during these testing times of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially the virulent second wave, all individuals associated with print and electronic media are not only getting increasingly aware about the risk involved in this profession but are also eager to draw the attention of the authorities concerned.

Regardless of the precautionary measures adopted by the media houses to keep the business alive, increasing cases of media persons contracting the disease in their line of duty underscores the challenging situation confronting the journalists.

While extending monetary assistance to Covid-19 infected scribes either by the government or the media houses is out of the context, the least they could expect from the former is to facilitate taking the jabs.

Ever since the pandemic broke out last year, the journalists are being hailed as one of the corona warriors in recognition of their daily updates on happenings across the world.

However, as reportages relating to the pandemic bring to the limelight healthcare infrastructure inadequacies and heart-wrenching tales of the people hit hard due to imposition of various restrictions, the ruling dispensations appear to be reluctant to commend the role of the journalists, especially in India.

For instance, in a report collated by Delhi-based Rights and Risk Analysis Group (RRAG) as many as 55 journalists faced arrest, registration of FIRs, summons or show cause notices, physical assaults, alleged destruction of properties and threats for reporting on COVID-19 or exercising freedom of opinion and expression during the national lockdown between March 25 and May 31, 2020.

Though journalists of Manipur didn't find mention in the report, RRAG enumerated that the highest number of 11 incidents of attacks on media persons in the said period took place in Uttar Pradesh, followed by Jammu and Kashmir (6), Himachal Pradesh (5), four each in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Odisha and Maharashtra.

Two cases each have been reported from Punjab, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala, and one each from Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Nagaland, Karnataka, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Telangana.

Even more disturbing aspect of the report was that as many as 22 FIRs were filed against various journalists during the period, at least 10 were arrested, "four others saved from being arrested by the Supreme Court for performing their duties during the period", and summons or show cause notices issued to seven journalists during the period.

These figures testify that rather than learning from the media expose and trying to plug the loopholes in the healthcare infrastructure so as to prevent collateral damages the governments had been strategising to silence the media by entrusting the law enforcement agencies to process action against the media persons.

Thus, amid the relentless spread of the pandemic unnerving both Union and state governments as they scramble to address the medical emergency, chief minister N Biren conceding that journalists have a great role to play in the crisis situation and assuring to prioritise vaccination of working journalists would be helpful in dispelling that notion of suppressing media, and that the government indeed acknowledges both print and electronic media as platforms for objective dissemination of information and promoting critical-rational discourses.