Daily Times

Violence against journalists to prevent inconvenient truths from making their way into the public space is a widespread endemic. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution in 2013 declaring November 2 as the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists (IDEI) to commemorate the hundreds of journalists around the world who are killed in the line of duty on a weekly basis and whose deaths go largely unpunished. This existential danger is particularly accentuated in the case of Pakistan, as a report on the ‘Safety of Media Workers’ released by the Pakistan Press Foundation to mark IDEI paints a thoroughly depressing and discouraging picture. The statistics presented in the report shed light on the formally recorded figures and even then the conclusions are disquieting: since 2001, 47 journalists have been murdered, 21 abducted, 164 injured, 88 assaulted and 40 detained by state agencies. Only two cases of violence against journalists out of 384 ended in conviction in the last two decades. One of them was for the murder of Daniel Pearl and only came about due to the intensity of international pressure. This amounts to a shockingly low conviction rate of roughly 0.5 percent and does not bode well for the health and safety of the members of one of the most important professions in a burgeoning democracy like Pakistan. And this horrific statistic is despite the fact that, as per anecdotal evidence prevalent in media circles, the actual number of murders, threats to life and illegal detentions of journalists is far higher than the figures reported.
The particularly disheartening fact is journalists face antagonism on all sides and have no recourse: militants, criminal elements, paid assassins, extremist religious groups, feudal and tribal lords are as much of a threat to the well being and safety of journalists as are the state’s security law enforcement agencies. As a consequence, the public’s inherent right to know is harmed as journalists are withdrawing from important conflict zones like FATA and Balochistan as well as resorting to self-censorship to prevent getting in harm’s way. The fault and responsibility of the successive governments for this deplorable state of affairs is obvious, but this problem has been compounded by the unconscionable inaction of media houses as well. Journalists are risking their lives every time they step into the field but get no basic safety training on how to conduct themselves in a conflict zone from their managements. Managements bow to the demands of threatening forces rather than resisting pressures or demanding of the government to push for more prosecutions against the killers of journalists and to ensure a safe environment for their workers. The demand for media houses to take action has been a long standing one and it is time they did their duty. *