An Open Letter to The Journalists Regarding COVID-19
During COVID epidemic media is playing a vital role to fight against Coronavirus. A doctor is giving medical treatment to a Corona patient and the media is making people aware so that Doctors don’t need to treat more Corona patients. The work of visual journalists is mostly outside of their homes. To cover what’s going on out there usually they have to step out of their home. During this epidemic period, they are at great risk. While covering they are almost exposed to the virus. They must maintain Safety protocols. In Bangladesh, a visual journalist of a particular news channel got infected by Corona and for him, a large number of employees of that News channel are in quarantine. Since many of the employees of that news channel are in quarantine, that channel is struggling to run its operations. The good thing is after this incident, that channel is providing PPE to its employees who are working in the field and encouraging the employees to maintain safety protocols and social distancing.
This pandemic is causing great freight and chaos among the public. We can easily guess the mental condition of a Corona infected patient. From Denty’s last week’s article, we came to know that in Indonesia journalists published much personal information of some corona patients including name, profession, residence address and other personal data without their permission. This created frustration and obviously affected those patients’ mental health. Their family might face problems in their social life because of this. This is obviously not an ethical journalistic act. This is true that readers have the right to know and we have to serve them information but not by crossing the line, not by invading someone’s privacy. We can relate this with the SPJ Code of ethics that says to weigh the consequences of publishing or broadcasting personal information. We always have to show respect and dignity while reporting about a sensitive victim.
Alike the Indonesian event, in Punjab, India a newspaper named “ Dainik Savera” published three videos in their YouTube channel claiming three people as Corona infected and published their personal information. Those videos went viral and those three people faced many problems such as receiving tons of phone calls from curious people who have watched those videos. Not only this. It was found out later that only one of those three people actually tested positive for COVID-19 and she is currently in quarantine. The rest two people are well didn’t have Coronavirus in their bodies. That newspaper deleted those videos from their youtube channel later but the damage was already done. Here we see that the newspaper has violated two principles of the SPJ code of ethics. Firstly they have published personal information of Corona infected patients. Secondly, they published news about two people who don’t have COVID-19 claiming to be Corona infected. We can relate this case with the SPJ principle that says to weigh the consequences of publishing or broadcasting personal information and one another principle that says to verify the information before releasing it.
In this crucial period of time journalists has to perform their duty well. We must stay safe as much as possible while working outside and should keep in mind that our unethical journalistic activities can worsen the situation.
— Piyas Biswas —
Student of Diploma in Visual Journalism — The Asian Center for Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University.