Sunday, December 21, 2008

Crime reporters are not GOD

I am not such an established crime reporter yet, but still have begun to feel the heat of this profession. In this four months' experience as a crime reporter with The New Indian Express I have learnt that people consider us to be very much like God. I mean ... Anybody has a problem, they rush to us.
Talking about my latest experience, one of our office managers, came to me saying that his wife's chain was snatched while she was walking towards her residence. Alright, like a decent reporter , I jotted down every detail from where she was coming from, how was the chain, where was she going, what time, which direction etc etc etc. Though our paper has stopped writing about the chain snatching complaints (Cos it is very comman and our paper lacks the space) I wrote this one which even got published. The story should have ended here right?
Wrong, I have this man asking me as what happened to his chain.. For God sake how would I know that? I am not the one who snatched. Did you tell the commissioner? did they find the chain? when will I get it? and with a zillion such questions, this man haunts me everyday. Seriously, even I am praying to God that let this man get hsi chain as soon as possible, so that I am spared...
This is just an example, we face such problems each day, where people approach us with a lot of hope and expectations without understanding that we too are just like them, serving a job.

Rakshita Adyanthaya