Journalists’ Forum Assam (JFA), while expressing grief over
the increase of casualties among scribes due to novel corona virus
infections in different parts of the country, urges the media houses
to arrange the compulsory screenings for their employees. The forum
also requests every scribe to be cautious and careful in safeguarding
themselves while reporting the pandemic.
Local media reports reveal that a senior television reporter from
Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh succumbed to Covid-19 complications on 17
July 2020. Madhusudan Reddy, who was based in Kadapa, was hospitalized
as he suffered from fever and breathlessness. He becomes the second
media covid-19 casualty from Tirupati district after video journalist
M Parthasarathy, who died on 12 July undergoing medical attentions.
Earlier, three Orissa journalists (Simanchal Panda, K.Ch Ratnam and
Priyadarshi Patnaik) succumbed to the virus infections. New Delhi
based scribe Tarun Sisodia killed himself undergoing treatment at All
India Institute of Medical Sciences. The printer-publisher of Asomiya
Khabar (Rantu Das) died of heart-failure at a Guwahati hospital, who
later tested positive for Covid-19.
Chennai based news videographer E Velmurugan, Chandigarh based news
presenter Davinder Pal Singh, Hyderabad based television scribe Manoj
Kumar, Agra based print journalist Pankaj Kulashrestha and Kolkata
based photojournalist Ronny Roy earlier died of Covid-19
complications.
The forum in a statement expressed annoyances that over one hundred
Guwahati based media employees, working for news papers, news channels
and news portals, as corona-warriors turned positive for the virus
infection. But shockingly the worrisome development has not been
properly reported by most of the city based media outlets.
“Need not to remind that it is the duty and responsibility for
newspapers, news channels, digital outlets to report correctly about
the Covid-19 warriors within the media fraternity,” said JFA president
Rupam Barua and secretary Nava Thakuria adding that they continue
playing an important role along with the doctors, nurses, sanitation
workers, police personnel, etc during the pandemic.
