A cult classic and a nearly forgotten film remind us how precarious journalistic work can be
The assassination of senior journalist Gauri Lankesh at her home in Bengaluru on Tuesday yet again reminds us how fragile the glorified ideals of freedom of press and speech really are in our country. According to various news reports, at least five journalists were murdered in India last year. On the Impunity Index of the Committee to Protect Journalists, which ranks nations according to the number of murder cases of scribes without conviction, India is a dismal 14 (Pakistan is nine, Bangladesh 12). And, on the World Press Freedom Index 2017, India ranks a pathetic 136 out of 180 nations.
Perhaps the finest film ever on the hazards of journalistic work — leaving aside war movies — is All the President’s Men (1976). Adapted from the eponymous 1974 non-fiction book by The Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the film narrates the investigation carried out by the two journalists into the Watergate case, which — thanks partly to their work — turned out to be the biggest political scandal in the US, leading to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. With Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman playing Woodward and Bernstein, respectively, the film was the final of director Allan J Pakula’s “paranoia trilogy”.
The brazen murder of a colleague for honestly doing her job would be enough to inspire some paranoia in any journalist: Worse still, the gloating over it on social media by some supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party, not only justifying a crime but celebrating it; worse still, Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to follow some of these online trolls on Twitter. On a personal note, it was difficult for me to think of any films I could discuss in this dark, dark hour, till I remembered two from the 1980s. The first, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983), is a cult classic, enjoying a re-release in 2012; the second is almost forgotten — the Shashi Kapoor- and Sharmila Tagore-starrer New Delhi Times (1986). Separated by only a few years, they depicted the last gasp of pre-Liberalisation India. As we shall see, things might seem different now, but are they really?...READ MORE
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