Protection of media professionals

With the revolution of technology, the media industry has touched new lines of success in the present scenario.
The Internet has eased the formerly hard limits of the journalistic community to include people such as bloggers, video-graphers and citizen journalists who carry out their outcomes for evolving media industry.
If one side the industry is touching new peaks, the risks too are increasing day-by-day.  The Internet is throwing up the newer challenge of the need to protect digital security.

International Committee to Protect Journalist (CJP) carried out a research, showing that one the average, 30 media professionals are killed around the world every year.
While shedding light on various reasons of the risks and fears by journalists of different community, it said about half the media professionals that are in jail at any given time work mainly online.
Beat reports particularly covering crime, corruption, politics and conflicting areas are vulnerable to attack or abduction. All journalists do not have support from their organizations that are facing potential risk of their security.
The Committee to Protect Journalists while realizing this gap launched an interactive Journalist’s Security Guide, which gives a blueprint for news professionals’ physical and digital security.
The new projects covers wide range of issues including preparing to wrap an armed conflict, measures to protect oneself, sources and family while covering organized crime and corruption, and to protect digital information.
The CPJ has done valuable work for journalists across the world in creating the guide, particularly in Pakistan, the most dangerous place in the world for journalism.
Journalists in Pakistan face similar issues like anywhere else. Furthermore, they render all the more grave by Pakistan’s unique state of affairs, such as terrorism in the north-western parts of the country, militancy in the urban areas and the tactics of intimidation and coercion used on occasion by religious, political and ethnic groups.
At such circumstance, this type of guide by the CJP ought not to take pressure off broadcasting houses to train and amply equip their staffers for their protection.
All institutional and non-institutional means should be used to support journalists who undertake vital and dangerous work.(by Faisal Farooq, http://www.newspakistan.pk/2012/05/01/protection-media-professionals/)