Killing the story

Over the past few days in India, all media headlines have been focused on one issue – the killing of crime journalist Jyotirmoy Dey, in the daytime, in well-populated Mumbai city. The story is tragically simple – Dey was riding his motorbike, on his way home to his wife, when four other bikes veered around him. He was shot a number of times before the bikers sped off. He died of his wounds before he could be admitted into hospital.

The murder took all of 45 seconds. Just last month, Pakistan – a country facing more trouble than ever before as regards law and order is concerned – was the scene of a ruthless killing. Journalist Saleem Shahzad had vanished soon after leaving home in Islamabad, headed for a studio to film his segment for a television talk show. He was found dead two days later, his body showing signs of interrogation under torture, it was reported.

According to the organisation Reporters Without Borders, since the beginning of 2010, 16 journalists have been killed in Pakistan. The country ranks a dismal 151 of 178 countries in its press freedom index.

In the Philippines, in Nabua, Camarines Sur, Romeo Olea was on his way to a radio office when he was shot, most likely for some story that he had done or was working on. This was the third murder of its kind in the nation in 2011. And there have been many more over the past year.

In Bangladesh, the toll is two (in recent times) – Hossain Altaf, publisher of the daily Bajrakontha, was found in a decomposed state in the septic tank of his own home, nine days after he was reported missing. Mahbub Tutul of the Ajker Prottasha and Ajker Surjodoy was killed in Chittagong, but the crime is likely to be business connected, since he had already quit journalism a few years ago.

These countries figure on the CPJ Impunity Index published this year. In the latest index, unsolved journalist killings that occurred between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2010 have been examined and analysed and the 13 nations with five or more such cases included in the list. To explain a little, the Community to Protect Journalists is an independent, non-profit organisation formed in 1981 to promote press freedom worldwide by defending the rights of journalists to report news without any fear of reprisal. The index was first published in 2008, with the aim of identifying countries where journalists are murdered more frequently than natural deaths occur, and governments fail to solve the crimes – not identifying the culprits or not bringing them to justice. "The index calculates unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country's population" is the way the process is defined.

The focus of the 2011 Impunity Index is to highlight countries where "journalists are slain and killers go free". On top of the list is Iraq, still a lawless and dangerous place to be, where killers of 92 media persons were never caught and/or punished. Pakistan joins the list at number 10. Unfortunately for your country and mine, Bangladesh, Brazil and India follow close behind.

As the executive director of CPJ Joel Simon says, "The findings of the 2011 Impunity Index lay bare the stark choices that governments face: either address the issue of violence against journalists head-on or see murders continue and self-censorship spread."

But somewhere along the way, there is a flip side to the whole story. It is not just doom and gloom and the fault of governments or nations, or even the criminals alone. Many journalists rush in where armour-plated fighting machines fear to roll in, and are killed because of their foolhardy behaviour. Sure, it is the job of a journalist to hound for news. But in countries like Iraq or, more currently, Libya, there is strife, ongoing for a while now. This could better be defined as a state of war rather than armed hostility.

In other words, for a journalist to run into such an environment, it needs caution, training, protection and, always, always, always, full knowledge that death could be around the corner.

The same goes for a more 'safe' country where news is being made. A city like Mumbai, for instance, has crime, has an underworld, has dealings that, if exposed, could create a situation of grave personal danger for a journalist. There should be protection from the state, yes, but the media also needs to be ultra-cautious about getting into corners that there is no backing out of. Tragedy is often the result of a misstep.

They say that Dey was killed for knowing too much about the wrong people. Perhaps he died because he did not keep the right people informed about what he knew?

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Ramya Sarma is a Mumbai-based writer-editor.