Mediascape: Journalists are not corona-proof

If Shakespeare was a journalist when he wrote Merchant of Venice, he would probably have written: “Hath not journalist hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means…if you prick us do we not bleed? “

But then, Shakespeare was not a journalist. Maybe he was, and then maybe he was not. This is beside the point.

Back in 2007, all newsrooms were hit by what medics call post-traumatic stress disorder. Such a highfalutin name, but the meaning is clear – after covering so much hatred and pain and death, many newsrooms had to call in psychologists and counselors to debrief their staff, some who broke down under the heavy yoke of covering death where they knew life; hate, where they knew love.

Thirteen years later, we are back to traumatised newsrooms. The desks are the same; the shouting; and the deadlines the same, only this time it has a name – coronavirus.

Thing is, there is a sense of invincibility that makes journalists run toward danger when everyone is running away from it.

Maybe it is madness. Maybe it is an embedded instinct. Maybe both.

But when shots ring, when sirens wail, journalists run towards danger.

Coronavirus is about to change this. For once, we have a danger that can not only kill journalists but also their families – their wives and husbands, mpangos, friends and their children.

For once, journalists – these gallant men and women who laugh at danger, who click away and scribble when everyone else is wailing – are facing something bigger than what, when, where, who, why, how and so-what.

We are facing the spectre of, not just covering death, but taking death home with us after delivering on those tight deadlines.

Coronavirus is not just a danger to individual journalists’ lives but a threat to entire newsrooms.

Here is a classic example: Last week, Playboy, the men-only magazine whose colourful pages of nudes had many boys drooling, announced it was shutting down its print edition, expedited by coronavirus crisis.

The magazine was shutting down anyway, but coronavirus drove the last nail in its print edition. The reason: “Disruption of coronavirus to content production and supply chain…”

Of course Playboy was, like many of us, struggling with dipping sales – nudes do not sell anymore. People can get them for free any time.

But the editors at Playboy were clear, the shutdown, though it was long coming, was “expedited by coronavirus…”

And right there you have a direct hit of coronavirus on newsrooms.

But cheer up – the worst is yet to come.

It will come when one of our gallant men and women, under intense pressure to deliver an exclusive on coronavirus, pushes their luck too far, maybe because of a sense duty, maybe because journalists are suicidal, or both.

Either way, this brave man or woman will get their exclusive alright, and come back to the newsroom to file it, and meet their editors who will give them a high-five for delivering an exclusive; and excitedly tell their colleagues on the queue for four o’clock tea how they got their coronavirus exclusive.

The following day or two, the ‘exclusive’ journalist will not report to work – probably call in sick.

The next day, his doctor will deliver another exclusive: Guys, you have coronavirus in your newsroom. All of you need to be quarantined!

And right there, in two days, coronavirus will have shut down an entire media house.

So, before we send a news crew on the next coronavirus assignment, let us all remember one thing; that they too, are human, they too can bleed, and like the Merchant of Venice, they too, are subject to the same diseases.

Guys, we are not invincible.