Tale of a dead – Crack in the Fourth Pillar – Gauri Lankesh ?

Google is a giant as far as search engines are concerned. We rely heavily upon it for our day to day activities. The first thing over google when searched for “journalism” will be – “the activity or profession of writing for newspapers, magazines, or news websites or preparing news to be broadcast.”. Journalism can be classified in many categories. But in none of the categories you will find an ideology attached to it or a bias objectification of events. Rather that leads to a mental corruption when journalism starts acting like a daily soup, trying to get TRPs high rather reflecting the truth in its purest form possible.

The death of Gauri Lankesh shook the entire nation as it was unfortunate and as the subsequent reports showed it followed the same pattern like some of the earlier high profile reporters’. Her ideological dissent and a strong voice against the Government is believed to be the cause, which is still foggy. But what emerged to be clear is the ideological divide in the fraternity of journalism. Never before we witnessed such an outrage for a journalist’s death. It seems now we are able to quantify the cost of a soul which help us decide our outrage. May be a particular ideology bear a higher cost than its counterpart. Why haven’t we seen the same vigor and zeal when it comes to the murder of a non-left aligned reporter? That is also the part of the same fraternity. Why such selectivity? A murder is a murder. There can’t be a color to it. It was a heinous act by the perpetrators but the death was demeaned by the act of excess exposure to ideological warfare.

The platform was – “Press Club, Delhi”, the occasion was outburst of the anger over the death of Gauri Lankesh. Sounds legitimate until it became a political theatre all together. Why do we see the same faction of people feeding over the deaths and that too so selective in nature? There are losses of life every second and every life has the same price tag. Who and what decides the patronage of these golden hearted to the lifeless corpse lying cold to be fed upon by parasites for their own survival? Dissent is the backbone for democracy. Agreed. But not a destructive dissent, not a dissent for the sake of it, but a constructive one. When you keep shouting against an ideology without a logical conclusion, you just strengthen it rather weakening. There might be a difference of opinions but that should not blind the rationality and particularly of the so called journalists. They have a job to deliver- Truth. A reader doesn’t need an opinion, he has his own intelligence well intact. All he needs is the sequential order of incidents in the order of relevance. Why is it so hard to understand? Hindutva, Right Wing Extremism, Saffron Terrorism whatever it is or it is not, let it reveal itself rather somebody else preaching a propaganda and instilling a fear of a non-existent ghost. There is a robust Democracy which is organic. It deserves respect and so shall be bestowed upon.

Media should not be dictating terms rather it should try to bring out truth. If the voice of dissent is being suppressed, law will reign and justice will be done. The nadir the journalism has stooped to needs to come to an end. Ideological warfront is not the role of a journalist. May be they should learn to keep politics away from their profession. Just now a death was traded for political mileage which is a trench in itself. Gauri Lankesh deserved better. I wouldn’t be happy if I were her. RIP the sheep and the shepherd.