“Journalists should aim for balance in their writing. The importance of balance is that you don't go too far on one side and should listen to the opposite side for the story,” eminent journalist Sir Mark Tully said. “It is not your story but the story of person you are reporting on. Look for ways to bring balance.''
Tully was speaking at the presentation of the International Press Institute (IPI) - India chapter 'Excellence in Journalism' award 2020 and 2021, in New Delhi on Saturday. Recalling his experience during the Emergency, Tully said he was asked to leave the country within 24 hours. “The information was blacked out then. The situation is different today as information is available, and there are various sources available, but it doesn't deny the fact that there are pressures on the press. We should keep media alive. We should keep the flame of information alive,” he said.
He advised that one should trust journalists and organisations who have won the trust and not those sitting in the lap of the government.
Tully presented The IPI-India Award for Excellence in Journalism, 2020, to Ritika Chopra of The Indian Express, New Delhi. The award was for her exclusive reports on the working of the Election Commission during the 2019 Lok Sabha election which exposed the divide in the Commission and the unusual tardiness when it came to dealing with poll code violations.
In her acceptance speech, Chopra talked about the difficulty in reporting on government institutions, and amount of effort needed to hold them accountable. The award comprises a cash prize of Rs 2 lakh, a trophy and a citation. The jury was headed by Soli Sorabjee, former attorney-general of India.
The IPI-India Award for Excellence in Journalism, 2021, was awarded jointly to Sreenivasan Jain and Mariyam Alavi of NDTV, and Lakshmi Subramanian and Bhanu Prakash Chandra of THE WEEK. The jury was headed by Justice Madan B. Lokur, former judge, Supreme Court.
Lakshmi and Bhanu were presented awards for their efforts to trace Indians, especially women, who were trapped in refugee camps in the civil war-torn regions of Syria and Iraq. The team presented the extremely distressing conditions and the immense dangers faced not only by Indians but other refugees, too.
The duo talked about the challenges they faced in reporting from the war zones, and how they brought out the stories of those trapped in camps.
Jain and Alavi won the award for their coverage of 'love jihad'. Their stories exposed fake cases of forcible conversion registered against young Muslim men who married Hindu women in Uttar Pradesh.
Alavi talked about her inspiration to do “serious journalism”. Jain warned that conspiracy theories over love jihad were no longer held by the fringe elements, but have been mainstreamed.
The award comprises a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh, a trophy and a citation, to each team.
“It is a matter of common knowledge that the press is under attack in many ways. Many journalists have been arrested and kept in prison for a considerable period of time. Many others have had FIRs filed against them for the same reason. There are also instances of some journalists being politely asked to “toe the line” as it were, by the management or else,” Lokur said.
''We are seeing the same side of the coin but from two different perspectives - one that upsets the establishment without apparent justification and the other that may have some undisclosed justification. The result is that journalists have to be far more cautious than they have been in the past. It is for this reason that expressions like 'chilling effect' have suddenly become quite common usage. Where does this leave freedom of the press, a fundamental right guaranteed by our Constitution?”
Justice Lokur added, “We need to think about this and journalists need to stand up to protect their constitutional and fundamental rights so that accusations of a godi media or a somewhat compromised media do not become descriptive of the print and audio-visual media across the country.”
Quoting Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, he said, “If you don’t have facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust.” He cited the example of mass migration after the first lockdown. “However, the Supreme Court was informed by the government that no one was on the road at that time. Did we have the facts or did we not? Did we have the truth or did we not? To what extent did the information, passed on to the Supreme Court and the people of India, damage the trust in the government to tell the truth?”
Justice Lokur stressed on the need to follow investigative journalism. “There is a difference between investigative journalism and journalism concerning investigations.”
Also in attendance were Fellow, IPI-International, and THE WEEK editor Philip Mathew, member executive, IPI-India, M.K. Razdan. The audience comprised of members of parliament, government officials, senior editors, journalists and eminent personalities.
IPI-India had instituted the annual award in 2003 to recognise and honour the best work done by an Indian media organisation or journalist working in print, radio, television and internet mediums. In 2009, it was awarded jointly to Bidisha Goshal of THE WEEK for her investigation into the sexual victimisation of the widows of farmers who committed suicide in Vidarbha, and to The Indian Express for its investigation into the Hindu terror links in the Malegaon and Modasa blasts.
In 2011, the award was won jointly by Tehelka for its expose of the "rent a riot" tactics of the Sree Rama Sene in Karnataka, and THE WEEK for its sustained investigation into the sham medical and dental colleges which had no doctors, no patients and no facilities, and yet were awarding medical and dental degrees to students. In 2014, it was jointly awarded to The Hindustan Times for the investigation into acid attacks on women in the country, and to THE WEEK for its investigative feature on the plight of the widows of Dardpora in Kashmir, who had lost their husbands in the ongoing strife in the valley.
The award, in 2015, went to M. Shajil Kumar of Malayala Manorama for his investigation into the crisis of survival faced by minuscule tribes of the Western Ghats. In 2016, the award was won by Varun Bhatt of Rajasthan Patrika for his newspaper's campaign for building a memorial for the 1,500 tribals who had died in the freedom struggle in Mangarh, and by Rabi Banerjee of THE WEEK for his exclusive interview of Irom Sharmila, which gave an insight into the pressures that activists faced, and her desire to give up her long hunger-strike.
In 2018, Namrata Biji Ahuja of THE WEEK was awarded for her exclusive reporting on the “independent” Naga state in Indian territory.
