You can kill a journalist but you can't kill the spirit of journalism...it's immortal!

News has become a mandatory part of our everyday morning routine. A steaming mug of coffee in one hand, and a newspaper in the other, is exactly how our usual mornings take off. Then off course, we turn on the TV news channels or tune in to the radio news. What remains the binding element is the 'news' that has been readily made available to us by the journalists all around the world. Today, we don't talk of separate countries, and their individual happenings, rather, we speak of a world as a global village.

Be it the crises in Ukraine or the resignation of the Delhi Chief Minister who wanted to end corruption over night or for that matter, the Germany's latest counter espionage call against US spying notoriety, the 24 hours news supply goes to the credit of journalists. Present day journalism has become so advanced that no realm of earth is left untouched and uncovered by our prospective reporters. However, the truth doesn't come easy, and with it come droves of challenges which the journalists have to bear round the clock, just to keep the flow uninterrupted.

The London based International News Safety Institute (INSI) in its latest study 'Killing the Messenger' has revealed that the year 2013 witnessed the killings of134 journalists worldwide, plus, the unreported ones. India ranks fourth in the list with the most number of journalist deaths. Of the total, 65 died covering armed conflicts in war torn regions like Syria, where 20 deaths were reported, and Iraq with 16 journalist deaths. Moreover, 51 reporters were killed during peacetime while covering issues like crime and corruption, whereas, 18 died in accidents.

Reacting to last years' journalist casualty figure, Der Deutsche Journalisten- Verband (DJV) chairman, Michael Konken has called the numbers “atrocious”. In his words “ Every dead journalist is a dead man too much.” He further continues, “The killers of journalists are also perpetrators of press freedom.” It's not about a journalist getting killed, it is about the whole string of truthful facts related to a mystery, getting buried and lost forever. The kind of work and pressure, the journalists go through everyday to keep the supply chain open is beyond a normal person's comprehension. For us, it is as simple as tuning in to the radio or browsing through different news stories on the internet or reading the headlines in newspapers, but in reality, those involved in the task of bringing news to our table, go through a hell lot more, so that, in the morning when we wake up we could enjoy our cuppa caffeine with some hot and crispy news stories.

We all advocate truth, but believe me, it's the truth which we want suppressed anyhow. And the best way to avoid truth being published or talked about openly, is to silently silence the ones speaking about it, i.e. journalists, they are a bone of contention to so many. At the end of my journalistic training, we were told by our principal "today you have earned not just a licence to practice truth, but also a myriad of enemies, who at every stage, would want the truth to be silenced forever; so watch out!"

Not just the killings, there has been a rapid rise in assaults, threats, kidnappings, and rapes of female correspondents. Last year, a female photojournalist of a leading newspaper was gang raped in Mumbai. Besides, journalists are targeted through shootings. The report compiled for INSI by the Cardiff School of Journalism in Wales discloses that 85 of the victims were shot dead which included mass shooting of reporters along with individual assassinations. An equal number also dies in explosions, stabbings and beatings, by physical torture like strangulation or by planned accidents.

So next time when you pick up a newspaper or watch a correspondent reporting LIVE, acknowledge the courage of the person who is brave enough to pass on the credible news to you by putting behind all the dangers that possibly lie in wait for him/her.

After all, it's not just any news story, in covering it, someone, somewhere, might have just lost his/her life or is perhaps battling between life and death.