Abstract

The spread of the COVID-19 has proved deadly, and this is a challenging time for the union
as well as state governments as they work to address this health emergency. However, shows 
that in times of crisis, democratic governments may take a dangerous autocratic turn. In such
a situation, journalism has a great role to play in a democracy, as it has been ideally
visualised as a platform for objective information and critical-rational discourse. Thus, the
health of journalism in a country can be examined in the times of a crisis. India is a huge,
diverse country to cover, work of local journalists who have been on the ground, exposing the
shortage of oxygen and beds and counting the bodies at crematoriums to hold local
authorities to account for covering-up the true death toll of the pandemic. They have paid a
heavy price for their reporting: hundreds of Indian journalists have lost their lives covering
this pandemic, including over 50 in just the past few weeks. The precise number of
journalists who have lost their life and jobs isn’t known because of the data manipulation by
the states and because the employers have been secretive about layoffs, but estimate put it in
the thousands. And the crisis is not yet over. Media workers continue to be laid off,
furloughed, or made to work on reduced salary

Method- : This study will be conducted on the above 18-year aged population by the online
survey through Google spreadsheets. The semi-structured questionnaire will be circulated to
the known contacts in Indian states for responses.

Result- As many as 165 journalists have lost their lives to COVID-19 over the past one year,
according to a list compiled by the Network of Women in Media. Almost 60 of those deaths
came in the last one month alone, implying that on an average, two journalists have died
every day in April. The total number of verified COVID-19 positive journalist deaths from 1
April 2021 to 28 April 2021 stood at 52. The states with the highest recorded death of
journalists stood at Uttar Pradesh with 19 deaths, followed by Telangana at 17, and
Maharashtra at 13.

Conclusion: Journalist are playing a very important role in the dissemination of the COVID-
related information to the general public in India. Many journalists have taken to social media
to point out that there was no priority given to journalists, despite being classified as an
essential category and reporting from the frontline, on the vaccination front. While the
governments mandated that those on election duty had to be vaccinated, journalists deployed
at election rallies were not prioritised for vaccination