Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), an international media rights body, welcomes the statement of quasi judicial body Press Council of India (PCI) urging the Indian Union government and province administrations to recognize the journalists, who died of Covid-19, as corona warriors like the practicing doctors and other essential health staff.
The Council recommends to the government to include the corona-victim journalists in the category of warriors like other essential health staff and confer them with the same benefits. The federal government had already announced rupees 50 lakh compensation for doctors and other frontline workers who die fighting the pandemic.
“It’s a welcome move as the India has lost over 50 journalists to various Covid-19 aggravated complications till date. The pandemic is claiming more and more victims in the media and in countries like India, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, the number of victims among journalists is on the rise,” said PEC general secretary Blaise Lempen.
By now, thousands of Indian journalists along with other media employees got infected with the novel corona virus as they have been reporting the pandemic from the ground. India’s casualties compared to near 500 global media corona-deaths in 56 countries are relatively higher after Peru (with 93 deaths), but ahead of its neighbours Bangladesh (39), Pakistan (12), Afghanistan (7), Nepal (3), etc.
“A large section of media managements in India continue engaging their scribes to report during the pandemic with little or no pre-caution & preventive measures,” said Nava Thakuria, PEC’s country representative adding that many media owners, citing the reason of shrinking advertisement revenues because of the pandemic, even stopped publishing physical newspapers, closed down editions, cut salaries and also laid off their employees.
