Dateline North-East: Risky Business
To fully appreciate the conditions in which the media functions in the North-East, some standard terms have to be redefined. Here is a glossary of some phrases journalists usually use in other contexts.
Going out on an assignment: Being blindfolded and taken to an underground militant`s group hideout. If it`s the HQ deep in the hills, this could mean an overnight trip.
Unionism: Pressure on managements to have a proper structure, to define who is a reporter, sub-editor, newseditor etc. To hand out appointment letters instead of expecting everyone to work on the basis of an informal understanding. No union gets to the point where it could ask for a raise.
Workplace: A room in somebody else`s home. Where, women journalists says jokingly, you could complain of harassment under the new laws if such a place existed.
Occupational hazard: If you write against the government, the editor could be framed on charges of having links with militant organisations.
Insecurity: You could be fired AT any time. Also beaten up or ex-communicated from society.
News management: Deciding whether to put something on Page 1, as demanded by a militant organisation, or try to get away with publishing it as a Letter to the Editor, and face the consequences tomorrow.
Just as it is difficult to talk about the Indian media as a whole, one cannot talk about media in the north-east as a homogenous unit. It covers the whole spectrum of more than 300 communities, just as many languages, and almost double the number of dialects. Still, there are some common features which distinguish it from the media in the rest of India.
One is that communication is a one-way process: the area gets all the national news, but news from the north-east, barring violent incidents, never makes it to the national media. Extraordinary things happen all the time which we never hear of - good copy, with all the local colour an editor could ask for.