On October 2, celebrated as the birth anniversary of a journalist – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi – media persons across India will be on a protest against the rising attacks on them, under the slogan, “You can kill but you can’t stop us”. The words they have chosen to define their action are recognition that the threat to their lives and well-being arise from the stories they have done, are doing and could do in the future; stories that someone, somewhere do not want going public.

There is also an important promise to the country here: that the labours of independent journalists will carry on, no matter the threat. The viciousness of those who seek to target journalists in this way is only matched by their cowardice – striking under the cover of night, stinging under the veil of anonymity.

Journalists are meant to be “objective”, and a recent piece in The Wire, ‘Is the Indian Media Failing to Perform a Necessary ‘Activist’ Role?’ (September 22) unpacks what that means in an age of proliferating media platforms, while arguing powerfully for why the times require journalists to be activists. The fact, however, is that media professionals within formal organisations have very little agency to play that role, even if they wish to, given the structures of power in which they operate. Even journalists who don’t self-define themselves as activists and try hard to be “objective” find themselves under attack the moment they focus on anything that goes against the interests of the ruling establishment. What is demanded of them is a stance that negates the very raison d’etre of their profession of being the independent eyewitness. Only total submission to the “greater good” of the nation as defined by the ruling powers will do.