To put it plainly, the words of the Naga Women Hoho Dimapur General Secretary, “Media persons have no right to pressurize or influence ACAUT what to do or not to do”. I stay in Mokokchung and when I talked with my Editor the other night about this issue; he simply told me that “You and I were not at the press conference, so we cannot judge.”Honestly, those were pragmatic, simple and to the point words.
But on reading the papers, I cannot fathom what drove our ‘respectable’ leader to say such words, which touched the very core of every working journalist in the field.
I, for one, live by a simple rule ‘friend of none, enemy of none’. And the most awkward moment comes when the phone rings and there is an unknown voice that says, “thank you for the nice report!!” It’s only then a thought comes to my mind that I did go for a boring programme the previous day and wrote a regular story and my paper did find spaces for the threadbare story. All I can say is, “you don’t have to thank me. I was just doing my job”. And talking about job, perhaps we, the field reporters are the unprivileged or the privileged lot simply because we get to interact with a cross section of society. Sometimes we travel in SUVs, sometimes in trucks and sometimes we walk under the hot sun or even hailstorms. But, we love it. It is only the twenty minutes when we sit in front of the computer and file our story; we find the real joy in our hard day work. Therefore when we hear irresponsible words from responsible leaders like a Naga women Hoho Dimapur General Secretary, it is quite distressing. It touches to the very core of our working ethics. The media or let me say field reporter, we live by a simple rule. I am responsible to my Editor and my Editor is responsible to the people.
Simple as that. So we have a responsibility. Under such circumstances, it is hard to understand why the media persons are always on the receiving end. It is not that we want you to acknowledge us; we are comfortable sitting on the floor also. But at the end of the day, we are just the medium of conveying the message to the people simply because the ‘people has a right to know’ what our ‘honorable’, ‘respectable’ leaders are talking about. Besides, we are privileged to talk with everyone, right from the housewife to the drunkard, to the officer or the peon – they all have an opinion, and we take the task of sharing such views to the people so that it can be digested by every reader.
All said and done, I don’t know under what circumstances our ‘respectable’ leader, the General Secretary of NWHD uttered such words. But I would say that media is just a medium of expression of the people’s view. The word ‘pressurize’ or ‘influence’ seems inappropriate because by and large the contents of a newspaper are about people’s views and opinions and it matters. Reporters get to interact with a lot of people, some who our respectable leaders would never get the chance to meet. Our job is to sieve out the truth from an ocean of information and misinformation. It’s not an easy task. As for pressurizing, please remember, we will continue to give criticism, whether you like it or not. We will gather information, we will make analysis, and we will inform the people. And we are in this job simply because we feel that the people have a right to know.
During my college days, my English lecturer used to say, “Criticize, but give a valid point why you criticize.” After reading every sentence in a poem he would ask us, “Why??”
The Naga people today are asking why? Why taxes? Why killings? Why? Why? Why? They have a right to know. And they will know. It is our responsibility to let the people know. And their views and opinions will surely “influence” and “pressurize” what our ‘honorable’ and ‘respectable’ leaders think and decide, because we live in a democratic society.
Longrangty Longchar
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