ImageCourtesy: news18.com
Truth is indeed a bitter pill to consume and digest. But it becomes even bitter when someone – a person with a wide range of contacts and powerful stature- is exposed. Journalists are prone to danger, especially when it comes to exposing powerful men, who later order their loyalists to storm the organization’s offices and subject journalists to roughness and brutality.
This, and things with greater intensity, have shaken us time and again – be it when offices have been attacked in cities and popular journalists assaulted for exposing the reality and taking a tough line against a political party or agenda or criminals.
We live in an era where the freedom comes with a risk and those proceeding ahead with audacity are slapped with legal notices and law suits, dragging their legs into the puddle of complications, simply because they honestly bring clandestine things into the limelight and public glance, exposing the mastermind who isn’t able to swallow and digest it all.
The recent incident in UP, where journalist Jagendra Singh was burnt alive, following a series of reports he wrote, bravely and audaciously, against the strongmen, pushes to the forefront the dark reality of danger journalists witness, practically everyday. Uttar Pradesh, as facts have had it, is a place where several crimes have been happening and those who try to expose the vicious nexus are either silenced or departed to their heaven abode.
However, things in the other states aren’t divergent either. Subsequent to the attack on Singh, Divya Marathi’s Nashik office was badly ransacked and journalist Sanjay Jadhav was beaten black and blue. And some weeks later, we had another attack on a Madhya Pradesh journalist making headlines.
It isn’t that journalists are not aware of the risks they take, but it is just that, bringing secret, malicious and illegal things into full public glare is extremely essential, for the people of this country have a right to know what happens at their back. And how will this be possible without the media? All the popular and horrible scams have been unearthed by the media and several corrupt people, wearing the pseudo-honest mask, have been exposed.
Ironically, we live in a country with most news channels and a strong presence of digital and print media. At the same time, this also happens to be the country where the media is considered as the fourth and a crucial pillar of democracy and freedom of the press is much talked about. But is respect seriously being given to the freedom of the press? What kind of a message are we portraying with the killings of those who maintain this fourth pillar?
Perhaps, popular personalities do not require as much security as bold, courageous and independent journalists like Jagendra Singh do. Journalists, who risk their lives and expose news, worthy to be exposed, need recognition and a good security. Otherwise, there is no kind a message emerging in the country where several youngsters think of taking journalism as a profession, practically every year.
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