The voice shakes, but still

Those who pick journalism as a line of work are a bit of a strange breed. The pay is almost never glamorous enough to be the big draw. Responsibilities can be ill-defined; a typical workday can have nasty surprises in store. Traditional weekends are often non-existent, the hours are all over the place, sometimes gobbling up even the sole mid-week off-day. Newsroom veterans are used to chomping down dinner at work, rushing to put the paper to bed late into the night while their loving family sits at home bewildered at the stalwart’s working hours. Eating schedules can be irregular, and your average on-the-go reporter is often fueled by coffee, cigarettes, and adrenaline. For many, this is a slow brew of health problems: stomach issues, diabetes, heart attack, strokes. Journalists know all of this, but still they do what they do.

This is because those with an inborn passion and desire to dig into the facts, bring hidden things to light, and speak truth to power, are people who see the work as more of a vocation and less of a job. Like the priest counting down the rosary beads knowing some things are a bit bigger than the here and now, true-blue journalists work to report the news because somebody has to. The right to information is a sacred tenet of any properly functioning democracy, and those with power, unless watched, will rob the rest of us for all we are worth, loot the country to the last inch, and make up a narrative we all end up believing. The powers-that-be will create the narrative of what is happening and feed it to the people unless objective media watchdogs remain a thorn on their side. Such thorn-like activities often get branded as anti-state or seditious, but really, they hold the state and rule of law in high regard – that is, they hold our governments to a high standard and believe that our institutions can and should do better. For the service that journalists provide to society without the motivation of personal profit or gain, in return they ask: let us do our work. Do not physically harm us, bully us, intimidate us, set our offices on fire, threaten our families, or – and this should not need to be said, but here we are – kill us. And if some non-government-backed entity is doing the violence, please make sure those goons do not enjoy impunity. This does not feel like a particularly big ask.

Today, November 2, is the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists. The words ‘to end impunity’ implies that such impunity largely still exists, and don’t we know it. As I write this, in front of me sits a newspaper with a front-page report revealing that the organization Human Rights Support Society found that in the first nine months of 2026 alone, the group recorded 288 incidents of attacks on journalists. In these incidents, 518 were harassed or assaulted, while 297 were injured. HRSS looks at 16 different news outlets and also does its own research, and it has found that there has been an uptick in violence on journalists year after year since 2017. The numbers by themselves though, do not paint the full picture of who is doing the violence, and to what end, whether it was pro-government or anti-government. To paint the picture in detail, ironically, once again you need journalists to be allowed to do their job. One thing is clear though, whether or not government affiliated parties were the perpetrators of violence, as the enforcers of our law and order, it is absolutely the government’s responsibility to ensure the safety of journalists is not threatened, and bring that number down as close to zero as possible.

Going through case after case of journalists that were attacked is a rather grim exercise, and crunching statistics of casualties after a while makes people’s eyes glaze over. A large number is a large number, and how much violence is too much? The answer is any incident of assault, harassment, or violence is one too many – these are real lives being devastated due to our broken culture of being unable to tolerate criticism of dissent. From taking ire at a cartoon to retaliating for a truth-telling investigative piece, it all goes back to a culture where powerful people think no one has the right to speak against them, while they the Big Fish have all the right to dish out retribution when poked. This is an unenlightened, toxic mindset which has held us back for over half a century. It also speaks to a deep-seated insecurity in our political fabric, where criticism is seen as a threat or direct attack rather than a legitimate avenue that can make way for reflection and positive change.

Journalists need to not only be kept safe, but also be allowed to feel safe. This means, the dark cloud hanging over their heads that makes them self-censor or kill stories or immoderately hit the delete button must be removed. And yes, it is as important for journalists to feel safe as it is for people in any other profession. I personally have never much bought into the myth of the ‘intrepid journalist’ – the American TV/movie archetype who pushes ahead with a story while throwing caution to the wind. Yes we do want assurances, because we do worry about consequences, and our voice does shake. But still, we try to do the work we signed up for.

Abak Hussain is Op-Ed Editor, Nutshell Today.