Reporter’s death on duty

The tragic death of a reporter covering the PTI’s Long March is yet another reminder of how media houses, journalism bodies, and media training and education programmes need to increase their emphasis on safety. While recent years have seen some advances in relation to the coverage of terrorism, disasters and other events where there is an overt risk of injury or violence, there are still massive gaps in training related to ‘safe’ everyday event coverage, where physical harm would usually only be attributable to freak accidents.

However, that is exactly what happened in this instance, as reporter Sadaf Naeem tried to jump off a moving container truck and onto the one carrying former prime minister Imran Khan to get some quotes, but tripped on the road divider and was run over by another truck. Two other reporters were apparently also injured trying to do the same. Sadaf also shatters some preconceived notions about the type of reporter that may be prone to potentially fatal errors in judgement. She was not a cub reporter with something to prove. She was about 40, with well over a decade of reporting experience, and two children at home.

PM Shehbaz Sharif and Punjab CM Pervez Elahi both announced Rs5 million each as compensation for Sadaf’s family. But we also hope that since she died in the line of duty, her employers also step up to ensure that her family is properly taken care of, beyond these one-off cash awards. But we must also note that such incidents could also be avoided if media houses and coverage subjects worked to fairly implement pool reporting systems, where a rotating group of reporters from various outlets share their reporting with others to ensure that every outlet gets the story, and reporters and their subjects are not endangered. Unfortunately, favouritism among political parties and other newsmakers, along with the cutthroat nature of the local news industry, have made this near impossible, and may have cost a young mother her life.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 1^st, 2022.

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