By Robert Clements
Don’t Shoot the Messenger..!
Many, many decades ago, while riding my motorbike as a teenager, I crashed into a car and was badly injured. At least the blood all over made others feel I was terribly hurt and the ones in the car, who were actually mechanics and were testing the brakes of the car they had just repaired, took me to the nearest hospital.
The lady doctor took one look at me, and cried out, “We can’t do anything!”
I remember looking at her through all the blood and asking, “Don’t you have children?”
“Yes, I do!” she whispered.
“Then think of me as one of them and please stop the bleeding!”
Well, the good doctor, and the nurses did do that, and later I asked her why she had refused to do anything at first.
“I looked at the men who had brought you in,” she said, “and I felt that if I did not save you, they would do something dreadful to me!”
To her the poor mechanics had most probably looked like gangsters, and she had heard about the beating up of doctors.
In all probability, I could have lost a lot of blood and maybe my life, if treatment had not been given at that hospital.
This morning as I read that the Manipur police had booked four journalists belonging to the
Editors Guild, for going on a fact- finding mission to the riot prone area, and reporting what they saw, I thought of that accident and the response of that good lady doctor.
Do remember that she was a well-qualified doctor, was working in a fully equipped hospital, and yet when she had to save a life, was afraid to do her duty. And soon, journalists who have learnt to sniff out news, and search for the truth, whose job is to tell you and me what really is happening all over the country, will stop doing so.
I remember a few years ago, in my daily column for Dubai’s Khaleej Times I had called Hezbollah terrorists, and there was a hue and cry from readers and the editor even threatened to stop my column. I stopped delving into the truth for some time, and then one day realised that whether the paper stopped my column or not, my job was to tell the truth to my readers and I continued to do so.
But for a few weeks they did manage to silence me, and like the scared doctor, thousands of journalists all over the country will react the same way after this arrest.
As a people, we need to understand that the press needs bodyguards, not policemen or the secret service or black cats, but you the people.
That doctor finally saved my life, and journalists who are allowed their freedom to write, will most probably save both your life and that of the country!
In the good old days when kings sat in their castles and sent their men into battle, quite often, guards from his fort watchtowers would shout, “Lone horseman riding to the fort!” And soon, they would identify him through his banner as one of their own, coming from the battlefield and let him in, where tired and exhausted he would be led directly to the king.
“We have lost the battle your majesty!” he would blurt out and quite often in his rage, the king would in a fit of temper draw his sword to kill the man.
“Don’t kill me, I’m just the messenger!” the poor man would shout falling at the king’s feet.
Today as I see writers, editors, and bloggers and many on social media, especially WhatsApp being blamed for riots, and incidents of lynching, I think the same is happening; we are blaming the messenger!
Let us look at the old messenger, the fellow who rode in on his horse again, why did he hurry to the king? So, his majesty could take preventive measures; like sending more troops, raising his drawbridge, or fleeing to a safer place to do battle later.
In the same way the press and social media of today, which I liken to the messenger of yore, is helping such preventive measures in a big way: Today, people know that any act of violence can be filmed, but more than just filmed it can be flashed in a jiffy to thousands and millions, and knowing this, such violent acts, which otherwise would have been a daily occurrence are actually being prevented.
The media has become the policing of the world! Yes, there are sporadic cases of lynching, rapes, assaults on women and so on, but there’s always the fear somebody is recording the whole act or reporting the same, and the perpetrators will be caught and punished.
What we need to see is the marvellous work of the messenger in preventing crimes, maybe hundreds and thousands of them.
What we are told about is a riot here or a lynching there, spread through miscreants of the media.
Today, the country is actually a safer place because of our smartphones, the CC cameras, and finally the powerful ability of our media to reveal the truth to the world like nothing else can.
‘Why?’ I ask, ‘Do you want to kill the messenger?’Do we want the only safeguards many of us have to be removed?
Do we want terror and injustice, rapes, lynching incidents, assaults on journalists, and molestation of women, not to be exposed, hidden and thus increase?
Is that the reason we want to kill the messenger? If the video on the horrible Manipur rapes had not come out, we would never have known how serious the situation was up there and thousands of many more such incidents would have happened.
So, don’t shoot the messenger, don’t arrest journalists, because the nation and world want to know, and you the people need to know, otherwise, like a patient bleeding to death in a fully equipped hospital, the same will happen to this wonderful country of ours…!
The Author conducts an Online Writers and Speakers Course. For more details send a thumbs-up to him on WhatsApp 9892572883.
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