Safety and Security of Journalists: Yet Awaiting Intervention from Indian Academy and Industry

Abstract

The article is an overview of the growing concerns about escalating violence against journalists in India and a matching lack of interest in Indian academy to understand the various implications of such violence—both pedagogically and sociologically. The fact that about six journalists were killed in a span of two to three months—September–November 2017—speaks volume about the magnitude of the problem in India—the world’s largest democracy that has the largest volume of media presence. By far, the safety and security of journalists was never part of a serious debate among Indian media houses or Indian journalism education except by way of expressing a symbolic condolence whenever a journalist was killed in action. Although Indian academy has displayed abject ignorance of this important component of journalists’ training despite the UNESCO proposing a model curriculum for safety of journalists at University level in 2007, the media industry which runs its own media schools in India to train its recruits is never concerned about the safety and security of the journalists. Using the methodology adopted by the Freedom House in its report on Freedom of Press (2016) for determining the varied ways in which the pressure was laid on the objective flow of information, the present study throws light on several dimensions involved in evolving a pedagogy for the ‘safety and security of journalists’ from sociological perspectives.