The documentary Writing With Fire, which follows the story of the women-run rural newspaper Khabar Lahariya, was nominated for an Academy Award. In a statement released on Wednesday, the Khabar Lahariya team said the documentary narrates only a part of their story, and “part stories have a way of distorting the whole sometimes”.
"The film is a moving and powerful document, but its presentation of Khabar Lahariya as an organisation with a particular and consuming focus of reporting on one party and the mobilisation around this, is inaccurate,” the statement read.
They further said: “In our 20 years of practising independent journalism, it has been a foundational value to be deliberate about how and who we include in the frame or story, about corroboration, about multiple perspectives. These values are not reflected in the version of ourselves we see in the film.” The team said that, in the two decades of their journalism, they have had a newsroom with women differing on political opinions and ideologies. "In 20 years, we have reported on (and befriended) many parties in Uttar Pradesh that have said they will stand for the rights of the poor, the marginalised, and we have shown them all the mirror when they have not done what they said,” the statement said.
It further said: “20 years of forging complex friendships and relationships in the field, in villages, anganwadis, schools, in dingy district press clubs, in administrative blocks – in the panchayat bhavan, in the block office, in the district magistrate’s office; in the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Samajwadi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress, the Peace Party, the Ambedkar Samaj Party, the Bundelkhand Mukti Morcha, the Swatantra Janta Party, the Rashtriya Lok Dal, the Jan Adhikar Party, the Bhim Army; and with all sorts of journalists.”
They concluded by saying that their story is more complex than the one going to the Oscars.
The documentary Writing With Fire, directed by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, has been nominated for an Academy Award for 'Best Documentary Feature'.
Responding to Khabar Lahariya’s statement, Rintu and Sushmit said that they do not believe that they misrepresented their subject. We filmed Khabar Lahariya’s role as an independent watchdog in a dynamically changing political landscape from 2016-2019. During this period, the ruling party was the most important party at that time and so editorially, we focused on that aspect of their reporting. It was never our intention to create any other impression,” they told the Scroll.in.
