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Journalism of Courage
Wherever there is a camera, you are likely to spot him or her. A funeral, a protest, and if they are high profile, he knows that it is a perfect photo op. Don8217;t call him a vulture feeding on the cadavers of lens-friendly lamentations and newsworthy celebrations. Rather, he is attempting to be humane, I8217;m-with-you friend, I8217;ll-take-up-your-cause benefactor. The exigencies of his trade require him to be a society-driven mourner, a good fellow in the service of the people. And what is he without people, he, the politician? On Wednesday, he saw people there, protesting the gruesome murder of the Outlook cartoonist Irfan Hussain. The protesters were predominantly journalists and the protest was pre-determined to find a place, picture included, in almost every newspaper next morning. The politicians came uninvited. You don8217;t wait for invitations for such occasions. It8217;s your social duty, your political responsibility, to be seen, to be heard, in the right, correct, and properly photogenic, context. But they wereshooed away. What8217;s happening?
Usually, journalists don8217;t shoo away politicians. They need each other. Tomorrow, this public humiliation will be repudiated by professional requirements. Still, Wednesday8217;s humiliation is very important as a social gesture. It represents a trend. When someone is murdered, the politician is identified with the murderer. His tears have no credibility. His words are empty. He is not real. He is not one of us. He is not trustworthy. That shopworn term, the politician-criminal nexus, is shopworn because it is a banal truth, so familiar, part of life, no way you can make it a lie. Your average Indian politician is the most common adjective to everything that is terrible, from sleaze to slaughter to swindle. Whenever he seeks out people, personalises the slogan, it is seen as an act, a self-serving act. What happened on Wednesday was an acknowledgement of this truth: the politician is undesirable.
