Is India really the second deadliest country for journalists?

For attention-grabbing in a host of media outlets in India, there was nothing to beat it: ‘India second most deadliest country for journalists’. The report, released by the respectable International News Safety Institute (INSI) stated:

 

‘The second most dangerous country was India, where there were six casualties. The last time India was among the top five worst countries was in 2010’.

According to the INSI report, Syria was the deadliest country in the world for journalists, with eight deaths in the first half of this year. The total deaths were 40 the world over. 

 

Curiously, the INSI report does qualify its alarming labeling of India deadly status by saying that, while the tally was high, it did include a member of the news media who was murdered because of his work while three were killed in a case of mistaken identity and two were killed in accidents! 

 

Now that’s a bit of an anti-climax. Only one journalist killed because of his work – the other five were not. One doesn’t mean to quibble, but even the other data in this report don’t seem to add up to what is actually a very grim and frightening situation.

 

Interestingly, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), another highly respected organization that monitors journalists’ safety, states that 35 journalists have lost their lives till date. India is missing from its list. Reporters without Borders (RSF) has the same figure but lists two deaths from India (both of the Dainik Ganadoot employees who were killed in Tripura in June in what turned out to be a case of personal vendetta case against their editor, Sushil Choudhary. The latter was arrested for the crime three days later).

 

Of the 40 deaths in the INSI list for this year, here’s the category-wise break up: shot (11), blown up (10), other accidents (5), stabbed (4), road accident (4), other non-natural (2) , strangled(1), beaten (1), tortured (1), air accident (1). The deaths are gruesome and even bizarre – from boat accidents, avalanche, hyperthermia while filming and an elephant attack too!

 

So journalism is not as deadly as one would imagine? Or perhaps its just as deadly as any other profession? What about other professions in India – farmers and agricultural labourers, construction workers, or maybe miners or garment workers or even those in the call centre industry?

 

Perhaps the INSI report works as a commentary on how journalists in general are pushing the envelope for a story and risking their lives in the process, but it somehow ends up belittling what media organisations have been shouting themselves hoarse about all these years – that a very dangerous and pernicious impunity permeates the media world in almost every country across the globe. 

 

Journalists, on the frontlines of information and news-gathering, are now being systematically targeted by security forces in situations of conflict. Witness these videos of the chilling death of young Ahmed Assem, who was killed by a sniper even while he filmed the sniper! And while the INSI report had only one death from Egypt for the first quarter of the year, the figure shot up to five, with three deaths in August alone!

 

Perhaps it is time organisations and groups ((including the Free Speech Hub) who work for and monitor journalists’ freedom and protection develop a far more rigorous set of common standards to track press freedom violations. And campaign together to stop impunity. For, it is not just about the numbers but the stories behind the numbers.