As the deaths pile up…
The heightened media coverage given to each of the four recent deaths of investigative reporters in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, has had one heartening fallout: a journalist’s vulnerability is now on everybody’s radar. Business Standard reports on July 23 that the National Crime Records Bureau will now begin collecting data from across the country on attacks on Right to Information (RTI) activists, journalists, social activists and whistleblowers.
A new template has been circulated to the states to collect data from police stations, with media persons as a separate category. However, the database will record these separately only in cases of 'grievous hurt of varying degrees', covered by Sections 325, 326, 326A and 326B of the Indian Penal Code. Deaths will not be recorded separately. So the full picture of how many journalists are killed every year in the course of their work will still not become available.
The deaths of Jagendra Singh in Uttar Pradesh, Sandeep Kothari and Akshay Singh (who died mysteriously when he went to cover the Vyapam scam) in Madhya Pradesh and of Raghavendra Dubey in Mira Road in Maharashtra last Friday, underscore both the perils of reportage these days as well as the systemic gaps which exist in tackling this serious free speech issue.
Within the profession, journalists are now responding with more alacrity to attacks on one of their own. In the most recent incident, Raghavendra Dubey’s body was found with stab wounds barely 50 metres from a local police station. Some journalists had been tipped off that the police had raided a small local bar, the White House, and when they rushed there to cover the raid, the bar owner and staff reportedly assaulted them.
Two journalists, Santosh Mishra and Shashi Sharma, were seriously injured and admitted to two local hospitals. Dubey went later to the site to investigate the reports of the police raid and the assault on the journalists.
Acccording to reports, Dubey even called Sharma, who was admitted to Indira Gandhi Hospital, barely half an hour before Dubey’s body was found. Dinesh Verma, a Thane-based journalist who had recorded videos of Sharma and Mishra as they narrated the incident, told The Hoot that, as he was speaking to Sharma, the news came in of a body (that of Dubey) being found nearby.
Concerted pressure from local journalists and the video recordings of Sharma and Mishra forced the police to book the culprits. The bar owner, Mahesh Shetty, and his assistant, Bhavesh Monani, were arrested the following day but, despite an agitation by local journalists, there is no response from the police about Sharma’s allegation that two police officers present during the raid did nothing to prevent the assault on them.
But registration of a case is only the first step. Despite mainstream media attention nationwide, the investigations into Jagendra Singh’s death have not proceeded beyond the suspension of police officers in the case. A writ petition demanding a CBI enquiry is coming up for admission before the Supreme Court next week.
A post mortem report on the death of Akshay Singh in Madhya Pradesh revealed that he had an enlarged heart but doctors preferred to ‘reserve’ their opinion as to the cause of death. An autopsy revealed that Sandeep Kothari was burnt to death and police managed to catch a key accused on July 11.
Why were these journalists targeted and killed? Has the profession suddenly become more dangerous or are there changes in the challenges facing the profession that we need to understand?
Atypical journalists as targets
While each of these deaths needs to be independently investigated, they also collectively indicate a change in the practice of journalism in smaller towns and cities where conflict between local reporters and small and medium businesses, local traders and mafias controlling illegal mining, the oil or food grain trade, is on the rise.
Clearly, these journalists are aggressively pushing traditional boundaries and using social media as well as small newspapers and television channels to push their stories.
Jagendra Singh, for example, used to be a print journalist in Shahjahanpur but moved to social media and used a Facebook page aggressively, garnering scores of followers. What a mainstream publication will not print, a journalist is able to make public by tenaciously using social media.
Sandeep Kothari in Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh - as Nivedita Khandekar‘s report in The Hoot indicates, used the RTI extensively to gather information and resorted to lodging complaints against corrupt officials. Mumbai’s Raghavendra Dubey, owner-editor of a small weekly newspaper, Khushboo Ujala, was well-known in local media circles for campaigning against the bars. The two journalists attacked in the Mira Road incident were also associated with small newspapers - Mishra with Mumbai Headlines, and Sharma with Dabang Khabre.
Who is a journalist?
Invariably, attacks on journalists are met with a predictable response from the police: that the person attacked was not a ‘real’ journalist, was not associated with a mainstream media platform (print or broadcast), was attacked for reasons unrelated with her professional work or, as we saw in Kothari’s case, had several cases of extortion and even rape registered against him (no matter that he was acquitted in most cases).
Today, with a burgeoning media industry spilling over into social media platforms, there is little clarity as to who is a journalist. Besides, in the unofficial hierarchy of the media, where the mainstream media is the most legitimate, these small operations are viewed with suspicion and mistrust.
There has been considerable debate on the criteria for determining a journalist and for the agencies that can accord recognition to journalists. Across the world, there’s no uniform standard to award journalists identity cards. While we have registration for print media publications and accreditations awarded by states and the Union government in India, there is no registration currently for online media news outlets, or accreditation for the personnel of less established ventures.
Several countries in the west have eschewed the registrations of publications and journalists obtain press identity cards from their employers or from journalists’ unions that operate as guilds. Freelance journalists may seek membership from press associations for a fee. But do such associations exist in very small towns?
And the related question which arises then is, what professional norms govern freelance journalists and what professional protection are they guaranteed? When they carry their campaigning against questionable activities too far and become vulnerable to attacks (besides exposing their families to attacks), what protection do they have? And do those who are well established in the increasingly lucrative media profession need to set up a support mechanism for them?
CBI investigations don’t help
Concerned about the indifference or complicity of local police in booking the culprits, journalists have been demanding a CBI inquiry into these recent deaths. A petition on behalf of Akshay Singh’s family is also pending before the Supreme Court asking for a CBI inquiry.
A sub-committee of the Press Council of India has reiterated this demand, adding that cases of attacks and intimidation must be made cognizable offences and every attack be investigated by the CBI.
Even with a CBI investigation, follow-ups and monitoring of the investigation are crucial. Often, this task is left to the families of the victims. The death of Chandrika Rai and his family in Bhopal in 2012 received some coverage and the police quickly booked Rai’s driver for the crime but it was only the dogged pursuit of his family that got the Madhya Pradesh High Court to order a CBI probe two years later to investigate a link between Rai’s work on a kidnapping case and the killing. In May this year, the CBI claimed a breakthrough in the 2012 Chandrika Rai murder case.
The death of Sushil Pathak in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, in December 2010, led to sustained pressure from journalists’ organizations to force Chief Minister Raman Singh to order a CBI enquiry. It has not yet reached any conclusion.
All these years, there has been no headway in the investigation into the death of Umesh Rajput in Chhura village in Chhattisgarh a week after exposing a medical negligence case that resulted in the death of a tribal woman in January 2011. His brother, Parmeshwar, was tenacious in pursuing a petition to demand a CBI enquiry and the court ordered an investigation by the CBI in February this year.
Parmeshwar told this writer that CBI officials visited the village three times - in March, April and as recently as last week - made some enquiries and promised to get back. But the accused are still roaming free in the village. Doggedly pursuing the case, he said he provided the CBI officials with all the details and it is only the Chhattisgarh High Court directive that the CBI must report back to the court that provides hope that justice will be done.
Media protection law
Clearly, much needs to be done to break the impunity that shrouds these cases. A few journalists’ organisations have also demanded a special law to protect the media. The demand, also voiced by the Press Council sub-committee, needs to be debated thoroughly.
In 2011, the Maharashtra Government did draft an ordinance (The Hoot has a copy) to protect journalists, but members of the Legislative Assembly (some of whom own or are associated with ownership of media houses) were wary of giving journalists ‘special status’ and questioned the definition of a journalist.
Indeed, with citizen journalists, bloggers and journalists like Jagendra Singh who used social media platforms, or Kothari who used the RTI extensively, the question needs to shift away from who is a ‘journalist’ to whether the citizen performed a ‘journalistic role’ in seeking and disseminating information which is of a public interest.
This is of a piece with the Constituent Assembly debates which dropped the ‘freedom of the press’ as part of the fundamental rights. Dr B R Ambedkar, in a reply, said:“The press is merely another way of stating an individual or a citizen. The press has no special rights which are not to be given or which are not to be exercised by the citizen in his individual capacity. The editor of a press or the manager are all citizens and therefore when they choose to write in newspapers, they are merely exercising their right of expression, and in my judgment therefore no special mention is necessary of the freedom of the press at all”.
Sustained media coverage and monitoring
Media coverage helps to highlight the issue and build pressure. Over the last few years, the deaths of journalists and the brutal attacks on them have hit the headlines, but coverage has been largely localized and inconsistent. In the recent instances, media coverage has helped focus on stringers – ranging from their hopelessly underpaid situation to the charges that several run other businesses on the side or have been accused of extortion and blackmail. A few articles were critical of the abject response of journalists as a community to these incidents.
Besides, we need to monitor the attacks too. Clearly, while each of the killings has been cold-blooded and well-planned, the non-fatal attacks too have been so vicious that they came close to adding to the statistics of the dead. In July 2012, Arunachal Times editor Thongam Rina was shot at, the bullets ripping through her spine; in April 2012, Kamal Shukla was severely beaten up in Kanker, Chhattisgarh; in March 2013, there was an acid attack on Dinesh Chaudhary and his family in Parbhani, Maharashtra; and in June the same year, a mob of Trinamool Congress supporters beat up television channel reporters and tried to set a journalist on fire.
Employers need to kick up a fuss
Media houses need to back their staffers or the stringers who feed them stories. In Thongam Rina’s case, while she was air-lifted to Guwahati and obtained medical attention, the newspaper ran some blurb on its front page every day for a whole year till the Arunachal government took note and the investigation yielded some results. The prime suspect Yamlam Achung surrendered in September 2013. Rina is now back on her feet and back at her job.
In the case of Sai Reddy, the journalist killed by Maoists in Chhattisgarh in December 2013, Deshbandhu newspaper gave a front-page report that the journalist was a regular contributor for their newspaper.
But other media houses are not so conscientious about their duty to their staff. Rajasthan Patrika didn’t do anything for Kamal Shukla, despite sending him a directive for a list of stories barely a week before his attack. And Umesh Rajput’s family has proof of his employment with Nai Duniya but the company simply didn’t acknowledge it after his death.
Today, with the growing number of freelancers, stringers and journalists on contract making up the foot-soldiers of the media, it is imperative that media houses take responsibility for them, not merely use the news they bring.
Undoubtedly, the ubiquitous nexus between politicians, businesspersons and the police and district administration prevents effective investigation of deaths or of attacks. Local journalists do raise a voice and at least over the last few months, their colleagues elsewhere have joined in. But when media houses also speak up and take responsibility for media professionals, at least they will get a fighting chance.
