Geneva/Guwahati, March 12: One more senior journalist based in Madhya Pradesh died of Covid-19 to increase the tally of media corona casualty up to 57 in the south Asian country, where the global count crosses 865 journalists. Kamal Dixit, who also taught journalism in Makhanlal Chaturvedi University succumbed to novel corona virus aggravated ailments on Wednesday in a Bhopal hospital.
“So far, at least 867 journalists died of Covid-19 in 69 countries, where Brazil with 109 media corona casualties has lately replaced Peru (108) to top the list of most affected countries,” said Blaise Lempen, secretary-general of Press Emblem Campaign, a Switzerland based nonprofit organization focusing on press freedom
and safety.
Other nations with high media casualties include Mexico (88), Italy (48), Bangladesh (44), USA (44), Ecuador (42), Colombia (37), United Kingdom (28), Pakistan (23), Turkey (21), Panama (16), Bolivia, Russia, Ukraine (14 each), Spain (13), etc said a statement of PEC, which started counting the corona deaths since March 2020 as a tribute to journalists and condolences to families and colleagues of the deceased around the world.
“The safety of media workers is particularly at risk in the Covid-19 pandemic as they have to continue providing information on the ground. A number of them died for lack of adequate protective measures when doing their job. The PEC requests early vaccinations for journalists on the frontlines,” added Lempen, who himself a senior journalist based in Geneva.
Mourning the demise of journalists in India, PEC’s country representative Nava Thakuria urged the media fraternity to maintain precautionary measures as the pandemic is yet to be over. He mentioned about the speculation that more journalists would be dying of corona infection related ailments in the coming weeks as the projected corona death may reach globally at 3000 per day by the end of March.
