The last two years have been hard on journalists. We’ve had to report on a devastating pandemic, while losing our colleagues to the virus. In the first four months of 2020 alone, 31 media professionals succumbed to Covid, and the toll has since risen to nearly 600, according to a record by the Network For Women in Media.
Add to this, many of our compatriots working in the mainstream media have reported in an extremely stressful work environment: salary cuts, fear of job loss, zero to negligent increments and a political atmosphere that is hostile to the very fundamentals of journalism – to report what you see without acting as a megaphone for those in power. All this and more has ensured that a sizable section of government ad-funded mainstream media falls in line, which leaves those of us in the independent news space increasingly vulnerable to legal action and FIRs.
