By Vidya Heble
Crime reporters are an odd lot. The world they cover is nebulous, mysterious even to fellow journalists from other sections. When they walk into the newsroom, sometimes you get the feeling they have come from another duniya. And it is, it’s one we only know about at second hand. To encounter that world up close would leave most of us traumatised.
Crime reporters seem to come with a different kind of spine, a different kind of glint in the eye. They share fence space with political reporters at times, and in fact the two spheres sometimes seem interchangeable. But covering crime is that much more fraught; it comes with its own cloak – and dagger.
A lot of us in media often assume privileges that give us that cloak – of exclusivity. Of being in the know, being on the inside. Be it celebrity gossip, fashion, activism or plain vanilla municipality reporting, the journalist is assumed to have a certain cover of – perhaps we can call it protection. When journalists get assaulted, arrested, blocked from doing their job – we feel outraged and invoke the freedom of expression which not just journalists but every citizen is entitled to.
Sometimes it works, the pressure results in justice for the journalist.
For Jyotirmoy Dey, who was going home for lunch, there is no scope for justice. Those who wanted to silence him didn’t wait for threats or punches – they used guns, and fatally.
For Dey, the cloak lasted only so long before the dagger came into effect.
It seems all the more worse because he was such an unassuming man. I worked with him for a short while at Mid-Day in the 1990s, and to be sure, I can’t remember what his voice was like – he spoke so little. But his words did the talking, and how.
Dey was as quiet as he was tall, though his eyes took in everything. If you asked me which feature of his I would remember most, it would be his eyes. He had a kind smile but his eyes were even kinder.
Mid-Day’s editor, writing about Dey’s killing in a ‘Note from the editor’, said, “Journalism is a frighteningly lonely profession. Journalists work in teams, but when it comes to taking responsibility for their work, they stand alone in the firing line. … Dey was alone in that firing line. Our job will be to ensure that he was the last journalist to be there.” Here’s hoping that the fraternity stands together to ensure this. It is possible to face down the element of fear that Dey’s killing is bound to have introduced in the media world. It is possible only if we stand together, though.
When I worked as a reporter for a newspaper in Goa many years ago, one day I met a teenaged girl at the bus stop. When she learnt what I did for a living her eyes widened. “A journalist! Isn’t that dangerous?” she said. I privately thought she had been reading too many paperbacks, and said, “Not more dangerous than crossing the road.”
I would not be able to give her that answer today.
