Editorial: Story Gained; Life Lost

Balochistan’s entire media family is in the grip of prodigious grief and utter disbelief over the tragic killing of one of the most talented young news cameramen, Ejaz Raisani. Thirty-year old Ejaz, who was killed in indiscriminate firing on a religious rally he was covering as a press cameraman, was laid to rest in his ancestral Kanak area of Mastung District.

Scores of journalists, press photographers and cameramen attended his funeral. His intimate colleagues shed tears over the loss of a smart and committed professional.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Reporters without Borders, Pakistan Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and Balochistan Union of Journalists (BUJ) have also offered their profound condolences over the killing of an outstanding television cameraman who was merely performing his journalistic duty at the time of coming under fire from elements supposedly linked to a fundamentalist Islamic group.

With the heartbreaking killing of Ejaz, Balochistan has lost a very ambitious media professional. His contributions as a professional and a regular participant of events intended to raise voice for the rights of journalists will eternally be remembered. He came from a remote part of Balochistan and a humble background but gained a very respectable position among his media colleagues because of constant hard work.

He was a regular contributor of the Citzens’ Journalist section of the Baloch Hal but was always treated as a staff member at this newspaper.

Ejaz started his professional career in the media as a press photographer with Daily Asaap and remained affiliated with that newspaper for around  six months. Later on, he joined ARY One World as a press cameraman. He was very popular among the journalists and professional colleagues because of his commitment to the profession and reverential attitude towards the seniors.

Ejaz is the second press cameraman to be killed in Balochistan in a period of six months. Previously, Malik Mohammad Arif, a cameraman coincidentally affiliated with the same television network that Ejaz worked for, was killed in a suicide bomb blast inside Quetta’s civil hospital. This time, several journalists received injuries while covering the religious procession on Mezan Chowk. Many of the injured journalists are the ones who received injuries in the suicide bomb blast of April that killed Malik Arif.

The management of Samaa TV, for which both the news cameramen worked, rightly deserves to be complimented for swiftly moving forward to own its slain staff members. Previously, the television channel announced a three-day mourning to mark the killing of Malik Arif and the owner of the channel visited Quetta to offer condolence. Reports suggest that the management of the channel has announced compensation of rupees one million for the family of the slain cameraman and assured to take care of the education of the two children of Ejaz Raisani.

This gesture is laudable on the part of Samaa TV given the context of the Pakistani media where not many newspapers or television channels own their workers. However, this compensation does not help in bringing back a smart man like Ejaz.

We believe he became a victim of the “breaking news” pressure or “live-coverage” syndrome. The owners of  broadcast television channels do not offer any kind of training to their newly hired staff. While very few channels train their fresh reporters, cameramen, on the other hand, rarely get any kind of proper training from their organizations. Worst still, journalists, photographers and cameramen in Pakistan barely get any type of safety trainings either from their respective media outlets or journalists’ bodies.

It is the time the news channels devised a code of conduct while covering bomb blasts and serious conflicts. It is unfair to jeopardize the lives of their staff members by asking them to become the first ones to dispatch footage of a bomb blast.

Pakistan is a country with different ground realities. There is no need to expect our journalists to meet western standards while covering conflicts. Nowhere in the world do so many suicide bomb blasts and follow-up blasts take place except for Pakistan. All news channels should shun the unnecessary “breaking news” completion among each other.

If this negative trend of ‘breaking news’ is not internally checked by the editorial staff of the private news channels, the life of every staff member would be jeopardized every time a DSNG moves to a venue to cover a bomb blast.

While the political parties in Balochistan have collectively proposed to the government to ban religious processions, we would urge all the bodies working for the welfare of journalists to coax the news channel owners to adopt a code of conduct while covering bomb blasts. They should not force their staff members to go to the extent of endangering their lives only to bring a “breaking news” which will hardly last for more than 24 hours.