'There is nothing like the thrill of going out on the field, notepad in hand': Sagarika Ghose

Sagarika Ghose joined journalism 34 years ago in October 1991, when the field was male-dominated. This, of course, did not stop her from becoming a rock-star journalist and author. She was a prime-time news anchor on BBC World’s ‘Question Time India’ and at CNN IBN, where she became its deputy editor. She has won many awards for her journalism, including the ITA Best Anchor Award from the Indian Television Academy and the C.H. Mohammed Koya National Award. In 2014, The Rhodes Project included Ghose on its list of 13 famous women Rhodes Scholars. She is currently Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha.

In an interview with THE WEEK, she spoke about the challenges of women in media, how she reacted to vicious trolling, and how the field became more democratised with the advent of television.

Can you describe your career in media, and what are the specific challenges you faced as a woman journalist?

I joined journalism over 30 years ago. I had just come back from Oxford University and joined The Times of India as a junior assistant editor and correspondent. At that time, the newspaper was a very different place from what it is today. Journalism was very male-dominated. The men did the “hard subjects”―like defence, foreign affairs and home affairs. Women journalists were supposed to cover beats like education and social issues, which were seen as soft subjects, though they are not. They suffered from not being considered for the same stories as men and not being able to spend the same time as men in the newsroom. But I was fortunate because I had very good bosses, like Dilip Padgaonkar in The Times of India, Vinod Mehta in Outlook and Shekhar Gupta in The Indian Express.

I think the real change in gender-defined stereotypes in journalism came with the advent of television. A lot of women journalists got the opportunity to go into the field with their cameras, because television is a hungry beast. You have to keep feeding it with news. So you can’t afford to discriminate between men and women. The structured gender inequalities that existed in the 1990s in newspapers didn’t exist in television, simply because it was too fast, too big, too quick.

You once narrated an account of your first editor discriminating between you and your male colleague.

That was my first day in The Times of India. I had just returned from Oxford and was raring to become a journalist in India. So there was me and another male journalist who was also a fresh recruit. The editor asked him to cover a political rally in Jantar Mantar. And he looked at me and said, “It’s very hot outside. Why don’t you go sit in the library?” The next day, this guy came with his report, and he was asked to do a follow-up, and I was sent again to the library. That’s when I started wondering: why is he constantly sending me to the library? So I told him to his surprise that I also wanted to go to the rally. It might have looked like I was pushing myself forward, but you have to do that. Only then will your seniors realise that you are also serious about journalism.

But there are problems. For example, in political journalism, you can’t spend long hours with a politician if you are a woman journalist the way a male journalist can. That will be misunderstood. That is not socially accepted. Also, many female journalists are married with children; they have to return home after work. Men don’t. They head to what I call ‘the glass club’, where they all go out drinking. That is a very exclusive zone, where many close networks are set up between men. Women can’t join because we have responsibilities and we need to get home. They become more excluded from the social life of the workplace. So these are the intangible ways in which women suffer.

Also, I think they fall back after having children. You can’t put in the kind of hours you could earlier. But I would say that if you want to be in a profession, you have to put it first. Because it is not fair on others when you ask for time off, or want to do less work. And when you come back from your maternity leave, you have fallen three or four places behind. Your place has been taken by someone much younger.

I was able to take on leadership roles when my children were a little older. But then, you are in a lateral space. You are more in the features space or the Sunday magazine, because the mainstream has been taken over by the men. All the men you started with have streaked ahead. So you get slotted into a kind of parallel track. In that parallel track you can rise. If you think about it, how many women anchor the 9pm news, which is the prime-time bulletin? Even chief editors or executive editors in media are mostly men. You might be able to make it to deputy editor, maybe even features editor. But will you make it to executive or chief editor? Doubtful.

Is there anything we can do about it?

Journalism represents a microcosm of society. It exists within the social network. [So all the top executives are men.] The head of finance, health or the social sector are men. The major politicians are all men. So the male editor slots in very easily into a power structure where all the other sectors are also equally dominated by powerful men. It is a difficult journey for the woman. I think the women who have succeeded in India have succeeded in spite of the system, not because of it. They have to put in a herculean amount of effort, and have to have massive staying power, tenacity and fighting spirit. That’s why they are all a little bit crazy. Take, for example, women politicians like Indira Gandhi and J. Jayalalithaa. They cultivate, what I call, a ‘designer insanity’, or a mad streak. Because if you are a little off, then people are quite scared of you. They keep to their boundaries. But if you are docile and soft, everybody will walk all over you.

Were you affected when you were viciously trolled on social media for your views?

I faced some very serious trolling when I first entered television. And it was really low and vicious, related to my appearance or how I spoke or what I was wearing. When my friend Gauri Lankesh was killed, I also got a death threat saying that I, along with four other women, was next. I was scared then because of what happened to Gauri. I knew her very well and we were on the phone all the time. When she told me about the trolling she faced, I used to tell her that their bark was worse than their bite. But then she was killed, and I got really scared. I did then register a police case about the threats.

It is scary in the sense that it is coming from people who seem to know a lot about your life, like the location of my children’s schools. But now I have developed ways to deal with it. I will either ignore, block or simply not give the kind of information that I used to earlier. Earlier, I used to take social media very lightly. I thought it was a fun, unimportant thing. Now I’m very careful about what I say. I’ve also realised that you cannot engage with the trolls, because the more you engage, the more emboldened they get. But it is difficult, because there is nothing you can do except ignore when someone is abusing you in unrestrained ways. It is also hurtful, because you don’t even know these people and you wonder why they hate you so much. It kind of takes you aback.

Can you elaborate on your wish-list for women in media?

What women in media want is equal opportunities to make the most of their talents and skills, in terms of in-depth reporting, anchoring, and doing challenging stories. Opportunities for truth-telling, objective, real journalism. Many women would like to do stories on the incredibly important issues of our time that are getting neglected―like mental health, family issues, the generation gap, crimes against women, gender justice at the workplace and domestic violence. Women would like to question the so-called traditional morality that is being forced on them through moral policing. Not everything has to be about matters relating to foreign affairs or defence. Women journalists―and that has been my own experience―would like to participate in the social transformation of our country.

Have you ever faced any threat to your safety when you went out on the field to report?

I did have this one experience in 2001. I was working in The Indian Express and I was sent to cover the places where the freedom struggle had taken place. I was going to Bettiah in the Champaran district of Bihar. In those days, the roads of Bihar were very bad. And the highways were not lit at all. It became dark very quickly and it was just me and the photographer, and miles and miles of rural road. Suddenly, the driver looked back and said someone was coming. We turned and saw three men on horseback with their faces partially covered with mufflers. I thought, ‘God, this is the end. I will be killed right here.’ The photographer, despite being the man, asked me to go and talk to them. At that moment, I was conscious of pure terror. That image still haunts me. But of course, there was nothing to be scared of. They were just farmers.

I always tell this story to underscore our attitude to field reporting. We’re looking for terrors everywhere. But actually for me, that was a bit of an anti-climax. The fear was purely what I had manufactured in my head about bandits coming to abduct me. In a way, it’s all part of the job. And there’s nothing like the thrill of going out on the field with a notepad in hand, talking to people and recording life. It is addictive.

I do think it is more unsafe for women today. You did not see the kind of aggression, rage or social tensions then that you see now. Also, there were no smartphones those days, so you did not face the problem of people taking videos or photographs.

What is your advice to a woman journalist of today?

Be brave and see it is as a calling, not a career. Then you will be able to bear all the hazards and hardships that come with it. But if you are doing it for the opportunities, for brand building or to become an influencer, then that’s not journalism. Journalism is a vocation, a state of mind. It is something that is idealistic, and that has more to do with your moral and ethical outlook on life. If you don’t have that calling, you will soon find that it is too much for you. But if you do, then you will love it.