It is an alarming situation for the Indian media fraternity as it loses almost three journalists per day to Covid-19 complications.
India, with 107 media corona-casualties has already placed itself on the third position just below Brazil (181 dead) and Peru (140) in the list of Covid-19 victims among journalists, prepared by the Switzerland based media rights & safety body Press Emblem Campaign.
The global tally has reached 1184 victim-journalists because of the Covid-19 pandemic in 76 countries since it broke out in March 2020. Other badly affected countries include Mexico (106 dead), Italy (52), Bangladesh (51), Colombia (49), USA (47), Ecuador (46), United Kingdom (28), Dominican Republic (27), Pakistan (25), Turkey (24), Iran, Russia (21 each), Argentina, Venezuela (17 each), Panama (16), Spain (15) and Ukraine (14)
PEC general secretary Blaise Lempen, while expressing apprehensions that the situation may worsen for the safety of journalists on the ground due to the pandemic, advocates for adequate compensations to the victim families. He also emphasizes on early vaccinations to media workers around the world so that they can perform their duties as corona warriors along with doctors, nurses and sanitation workers without endangering their lives.
Even after the launch of a massive corona-vaccination program covering over 21, 443,345 citizens till now in the backdrop of over three million reported infections every day mounting its cumulative Covid-19 cases to over 17.3 million (total casualty crosses 1,95,000), India lately witnessed the death of journalists namely Amjad Badshah (Odisha), Tanmoy Chakraborty (Tripura), Vivek Bendre, Sachin Shinde, Jairam Sawant, Sukhnandan Gavai (Maharashtra), Ram Prakash Gupta (Bihar), Rohitash Gupta (Uttar Pradesh) and Ramjan Ali (Andhra Pradesh).
PEC's country representative Nava Thakuria added that many media houses also showed callousness while reporting their own corona-positive cases, probably to avoid authorities’ interference under existing health protocols.
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