By Deepa BHOOKHUN

?You must have been drunk or high on drugs when you wrote that article.? This terrible and highly unacceptable accusation made to a journalist comes from the president of the Human Rights Commission. (L?express-dimanche, February 5th - please read it, it makes entertaining - and shocking reading.) It is to be noted that since that unfortunate incident, Mr Seetulsing seems to have revised his opinion of journalists and the way they do their job. The incident however is grave and cannot be minimized. Lest it happens again.

You see, Mr Seetulsing is not alone in holding this kind of language about journalists; he is not alone in treating reporters with disdain, in seeing us as little more than tape recorders on a good day and a pain in the back-side (a lying pain) on a bad one. He is not alone in - deliberately or not - not understanding the reasons why we do the job that we do. Very simple really; because we believe in a cause. Whatever that cause is, it only leads us to one place: the truth. A word abhorred by many people. No wonder we don?t have many friends!

But some of them are simply confused. No later than Saturday, I met three different persons who expressed their dissatisfaction with our profession.

The recurring accusation was that we manipulate information. I guess some journalists do; after all, as in any profession, journalism also has its rotten apples. But readers are intelligent enough to be able to differentiate between the ones with bad faith and the conscientious ones. So they should judge. Because we are, after all, at their service.

A French tourist told me about his disillusion with the press in general. ?Why can?t you guys be neutral and objective?? Indeed, why not? I guess we just can?t because we?re only human. There are the facts and there are the ways a journalist will appreciate and interpret those facts. No two reporters will see or hear the same things no matter what they tell you about the sacrosanct principle of ?objectivity.? It simply does not exist. Everything that is seen or heard through human eyes and ears is subjective. And it is not a crime.

As for expressing our opinions, well? what?s wrong with that? Expressing one?s opinion has nothing to do with manipulating information. Manipulation means falsifying something to one?s own advantage. If there is one thing that we take pride in at l?express, it is precisely that we give the facts as they are. Well then! As reporters, we report the information and we further give you our appreciation of that information. You, the reader, may or may not agree with an expressed opinion but that?s another story, isn?t it?

As for those who seem to be resenting the fact that we are doing our primary job ? finding the correct information and giving it to the people, we say, tough luck. Reporting is our job. And reporting, contrarily to what politicians and intolerant people think, does not mean writing what people want you to write; it means writing what you think is the truth, based on facts and information at hand. If, while in the pursuit of the truth, a few people?s feathers are ruffled, then so be it.

I don?t know why Mr Seetulsing chose to insult a journalist ( glad he rectified though); I don?t know why some people call us liars. But I do know why we bother people. Because they think they are not accountable, because they think they are above the law. It is not so. And don?t take our word for it. After all, who are we? No, we?re not important. But the people are. And the people, to whom all of us are ultimately accountable, whatever we think of them, are important. Tough luck, isn?t it? Well, we did choose democracy as a political system. And democracy means that the people are sovereign. Not as and when, but all the time.

No half-measures; all the way.