Although our heart goes out to the hundreds of journalists who have lost their jobs because of the fall of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, one can have no sympathy for the fallen empire for the simple reason that it

symbolized the lowest depths to which sensational reporting can plunge by employing unethical means. The suffering journalists are, unfortunately, paying the price for the immoral greed of their masters who stopped at nothing in exploiting the gullibility of the masses to mint millions.

While condemning the unethical and illegal practices resorted to by the Murdochs, this meeting of the National Executive Committee of the Indian Journalists Union expresses its concern at the display of similar tendencies by a small section of Indian media, particularly some of the lesser known TV channels and calls upon the country's mediapersons to draw the right lessons from the event and resolve firmly to refrain from pursuing the path of sensational and unethical reporting.

The meeting also decides to hold workshops throughout the country to propagate the code of ethics adopted by the Press Council of India and emphasise the dos and don'ts required by the norms of healthy and robust journalism.

This meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Indian Journalists Union, held at New Delhi on July24, 2011, expresses its anguish and pain at the martyrdom of our late colleague Jyotirmoy De at Mumbai last month and regrets the slow pace of the police investigations of the case. While offering its heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family, the committee calls upon the Maharashtra Government to take greater pains to bring the killers of J. De to book at the earliest.

The NEC strongly supports the demand of the Mumbai and Maharashtra journalist community's for urgent steps to ensure the protection of the fearless and honest journalists who risk their life and limb to expose the misdeeds of anti-social elements.

While welcoming the Maharashtra Government's offer to prepare and adopt a law to guarantee the protection of journalists, this meeting would invite the attention of the Union Government as well as other State governments to the fact that the journalists are not safe anywhere in the country and that many of our colleagues have suffered at the hands of various mafias in many States, including the northeast and Jammu and Kashmir.

This meeting, therefore, calls upon the Union Government to take the initiative in preparing a national law to ensure the safety and protection of journalists and compensate their families in case a tragedy strikes them.