4 th July attack on journalists: thoughts

Journalists are expected to be responsible

- B. P. Bajgain, Editor, haalkhabar.com

Journalists are expected to be responsible, unbiased and objective in their analysis, most of the time, and are supposed to refrain from personal biases or prejudices. However, this is one of the most debated of all journalistic values, and many today feel that it is only a fairy tale.

There should not be any argument as to the existence of freedom of expression in a democratic society. At the same time, if contract attackers' gangs exist, the government cannot escape from its responsibility towards the safety and security of its citizens by simply passing the blame to those gangs.

Determining professional ethical behavior is often a study in knowing the difference between praiseworthy and blameworthy actions. A journalist should be praised if they exceed the minimal requirements of a job without causing unjustified harm. Most journalists and other professionals rarely reach the ideal of praiseworthy action or the low of blameworthy behaviors-they find themselves somewhere in the middle. Truth is necessary for ethical journalism. Without truth, a journalist has no credibility. The principle of justice relates to a reporter's responsibility to be fair. A story should be complete, relevant, honest, and straightforward. The freedom principle means that a journalist should be independent both politically and economically.

At the same time, there are complains of assault on media personnel on July 4 media assault case. In the moment, the allegations are pointed towards the government by oppositions who are vociferous when attacking the government virtually for any incident involving a 'journalist'.

However, when we consider the level of political motivation and possible third party hidden agendas etc involving hired goons, nothing is impossible today. If this is correct, the obvious question come to our mind is how we differentiate a 'journalist' from other interested parties including politicians who managed to get media accreditation cards and act as journalist?

If oppositions are genuinely interested in their profession, what should they do is to assist the investigation and take necessary steps to regulate the profession, save journalists from terrorists and uplift their image in line with other professions.

Whatever their political commitment or their protectors are, people responsible for serious breaches of the free expression have to be identified, judged and punished.

The government's press freedom policy has proved to be totally ineffective to judge by these renewed attacks on journalists.

In our recent case, it does not divine well of state government policy towards the press. In this situation, political parties may politicizes our issue which is not good for the media freedom on long run.

In this situation, the best thing these assault victims and their supporters can do is use their investigative journalistic skills and publicly name the culprits, produce the evidence and tell the world why and on whose orders the offences were committed instead of merely demonstrating in the streets and accusing the government of suppressing media freedom, last but not the least, Police and civilians should cooperate to investigative journalist to unmask the mask.