Journalists or terrorists?

Now the cat is out of the bag. “Journalists are bigger terrorists than the terrorists themselves.” This one line could have been spoken by anyone in power, anywhere in the world, but for the courage that it requires, it took the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to say that. All in the democratic countries would like to remain politically correct and deny, many would even ridicule the statement but the fact remains that the journalists are treated worse than terrorists, at least in many cases. This is a candid confession, I would say, a statement of fact. Those in the power have secured themselves from the impact of terrorist strikes. Their bullet-proof vehicles and the high security, at the cost of making common men very vulnerable, assures them of the safety from the terrorists but the prying eyes of media expose them to the worst of the crisis. They have made several attempts to lure or scare the watchdogs into lapdogs and I have reasons to believe that they have been successful also at times but because of the multiplicity of the media in democratic countries, their tactics aren’t proving too successful.

In countries like Sri Lanka, the editor of The Sunday Leader, Lasantha Wickrematunge, was killed because he refused to tow the official line of the Sri Lankan government. Before he actually died, he knew it was coming and he also knew the perpetrators and the ways he could have avoided it but choose to lay down his life instead of giving up his professionalism. This might be one extreme case but the state machinery always tries to find ways to maim the media. Access to the files and documents is denied to journalists. To my dismay, I read the other day in the newspapers that journalists can be denied access to information even under the RTI Act on the ground that they represent some organistation. The state also uses other machinery at its disposal to silence the journalists and the government advertisements are a big chunk of that.

I am proud to be born in India, and doing journalism in a country where the press is very (or relatively) independent. Doing journalism here is not that difficult or dangerous but to my surprise, I was denied entry into the Red Fort as a journalist. I was told to seek permission from I know not how many people to get inside as a journalist. I had to pose as a tourist to get inside to do a story.

The state is always reluctant to share information with us but then they are doing their job and we can’t blame them for that. The state often denies the reports when it goes against them and they also pick a few of us to plant their stories and many feel too happy obliging them. Often we are given selective information and I have personally felt several times that the media has been misused by giving only as much information as could please the agency and their bosses.
There have been attempts to maim the media in all parts of the world and it is not a surprise that someone in power said that journalists are worse terrorists than terrorists themselves. In fact, I would take it as a commendation, a certificate that the media has been successful in playing its role of a watchdog and the Fourth Pillar. However, I take it as a commendation when the head of a state says this. The undoing will be when a common man, whose voice we are supposed to be, says this and stops trusting the newspapers. I have seen and heard people not believing the media and considering it as an extended arm of the state spreading propaganda. We need to be on the vigil to see that the media is not given the tag of being a terrorist by the person we have got to work for.