Lindsay Pereira: The death of a journalist

Journalists take part in a silent protest to condemn the killing of journalist Shujaat Bukhari. Pic/PTI

There have been two occasions in my career when journalists known personally to me have lost their lives. The first time this happened was to the American journalist Daniel Pearl, whom I knew from the time he worked in Mumbai in 2001, before moving on to his next assignment in Pakistan. It was a fateful move that ended with him being kidnapped on January 23, 2002, followed by a brutal beheading nine days later. There was video footage of the killing posted online, which was the first such instance I had experienced.

I had no idea that such videos were fairly common even then, among some circles, simply because I had no reason to scour the Internet for information about kidnapped journalists. That murder, committed less than a decade into my career, shook me. Until then, I hadn't considered the possibility of journalists being murdered for doing their jobs, not because I was naïve, but because I hadn't been exposed to the full impact of it affecting someone I had known personally. The next time this happened was 15 years later, when my colleague J Dey, an employee of this newspaper at the time, was shot dead by four unidentified motorcycle-borne gunmen in Powai. It happened hours after I had been part of a meeting that he had attended, too, so his death rattled me.

It's hard to describe what the loss of a journalist feels like to someone who isn't familiar with the profession. It's harder than ever before because we live in a time when journalists are actively painted as traitors to benefit a political narrative, be it in the United States or India, or in countries where fascism is on the rise. Independent voices need to be silenced by some politicians, and one of the most effective ways of doing that is to ensure no one will protest after those voices have been labelled as enemies of the state.

A year ago, three unidentified men shot Gauri Lankesh to death while she was unlocking the door of her house in Bengaluru. When this happened, the shock was overshadowed by joy from some quarters, as people online celebrated the death of someone they had been taught to look upon as a traitor. They had successfully managed to divorce the idea of this woman as a human being with a family from that of a journalist doing her job and asking tough questions. Some applauded her death as a victory for patriots, while others used the opportunity to warn other journalists about how important it was to toe the line.

This week, Shujaat Bukhari was taken away. I didn't know who he was, nor was I familiar with his work, but I recognised what he stood for, and why his silencing was such a tragedy for people struggling to get their voices heard. His death devastated journalists as well as ordinary people who have long acknowledged the tremendous pressure that journalists working in Kashmir have experienced from all sides. People cheering this murder, again, failed to understand that it was the erosion of their own freedom that they were applauding. To live in a society where one can be murdered for asking questions is to be complicit. It's because people stopped asking questions that Adolf Hitler managed to get away with genocide for as long as he did.

Journalists are people just like us, tasked with a job that should mean a lot more to us than it does these days. They ask questions we should all be asking. I don't expect the government to step in and reassure journalists that they will be supported, of course. After all, demonising the press is one of the oldest tricks in the book when it comes to political parties who want to make sure they can get away with crimes without being questioned. We function under a government that hasn't had an original thought in its head since inception, so these attacks on journalists and journalism fit in well with tried and tested methods of intimidation. I am happy to be labelled a 'presstitute' if that is what it takes to ask questions that need to be asked. I would be insulted only if someone were to refer to me as a politician. That, for me, is a bad word today.

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

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