Editorial
Journalists an endangered species
World Press Day reveals the truth
Observing the World Press Day on Thursday, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed grave concern over the mounting deaths of journalists the world over. Reporters Without Borders, an international organization defending press freedom, has mentioned in its reports that more than 60 journalists were killed in 2011 alone while 22 reporters and six bloggers have already been killed since the start of this year. The UN secretary general further noted that journalists ''face intimidation, harassment and censorship at the hands of the governments, corporations and powerful individuals seeking to preserve their power or hide wrongdoings and misdeeds." This conspicuous rise in torturing and killing journalists owes completely to the culture of impunity that perpetrators enjoy.
Bangladesh has ranked 129th out of 179 countries in the press freedom index that Reporters Without Borders published in January this year. It is little solace that we are ahead of India and Pakistan but our statistics and even freedom ranking for that matter portray a dismal picture. What particularly stands out as a test case is the law enforcers' failure to track down the masterminds behind the killing of the journalist couple Sagar and Runi.
It is noteworthy that apart from one or two stray cases, most incidents were politically motivated involving party cadres, powerful people and law enforcers. In some cases, the governments themselves have stifled the operational freedom of particularly the electronic media. Coming from democratic governments even just a few instances are unacceptable.
In a country like ours, free and independent media enjoying public confidence is an instrument for not only strengthening democracy but also helping the government with a reliable feedback mechanism. Therefore, the onus is on the government to promote press freedom and bring to book the perpetrators of crimes committed against journalists.
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