The price one pays

News organizations are normally prepared for deaths. Important obituaries are written well in advance, and many organizations are ready to publish them immediately after the news of the inevitable.

Lasantha Wickramatunga, the chief editor of The Sunday Leader, was different. He wrote an obituary for himself, just in case he was killed. And last week, just as he predicted, it happened. The piece, which appeared in the Jan. 11 edition of the Sunday leader was poignantly titled, "And then they came for me", a line borrowed from German theologian Martin Niemoller.

Wickramatunga's obituary is a resounding affirmation to journalists around the world, that their community, even in this day and age, can indeed play a major role in nation building.

People often ask me why I take such risks and tell me it is a matter of time before I am bumped off. Of course I know that: it is inevitable. But if we do not speak out now, there will be no one left to speak for those who cannot, whether they be ethnic minorities, the disadvantaged or the persecuted.

Look around war-torn regions of the world and you'll find journalists risking their lives. El Periodico is Guatemala’s leading newspaper for investigative reporting and its editor, Jose Rueben Zamora, made a career out of exposing the government. Some of his most famous pieces were about the connections between narcotrafficking, organized crime and people who exercised iron-fisted control over Guatemala’s government.

In June 2003, gunmen claimed to be detectives and his his family captive. They then tortured Zamora, put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger on an empty chamber thrice. They then left, ordering that he stopped publishing articles against the establishment.

Zamora's response was as ballsy as it got. He sent his family to live in the U.S. for a while, before publishing stories identifying the people who had invaded his home.

--

There's a lot of jargon being thrown around in the media industry: reinvent the business model, understand your audiences, unbundle the content, fragment the market, integrate the platforms of publishing ....

But there's nothing, absolutely nothing, that can substitue for heroes like Zamora and Wickramatunga. If those in the media hope to make a serious difference, if they genuinely believe they're in it for some higher good, if they understand their social responsibility ... it's time they saluted those like Wickramatunga. Let's hope, as he himself did, that his death served as an inspiration that will galvanize forces to usher a new era of human liberty in a war-torn country.

(We'll get back to the TGE theme soon)