At a time when India has been declared a ‘Dangerous country for journalists’, if we were to find journalists who have spoken truth to power, what better way than to identify the number of chargesheets filed under each of them.
Thus, following the news of journalists in the past year, we bring to you 7 journalists of news – a list of reporters (in no particular order) who lugged the truth from deep corners of propaganda and hogwash to out in the open.
Samridhi Sakunia and Swarna Jha
The two journalists were in news during the Tripura riots in October-November 2021, after a series of rallies were held in the State by Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other Hindu right-wing groups in the wake of the violence against Hindus in Bangladesh.
A video of vandalised mosques, Muslim houses and shops and a burnt Quran was tweeted on November 11 by Sakunia, who was reporting on the ground under the Delhi-based media-house HW News. The Tripura police took cognizance of the video and arrested the two for being a part of a “criminal conspiracy” to malign the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Tripura government.
?#Tripuraviolence
Darga Bazaar: On 19th October at around 2:30 am, some unidentified people burnt down the mosque in Darga Bazaar area. People in the neighborhood are very upset with the fact that now they don't have any place nearby to go and pray There's no other masjid nearby pic.twitter.com/JNkX8sVahS— Samriddhi K Sakunia (@Samriddhi0809) November 11, 2021
The reportage of the two women highlighted for the country the anti-Muslim violence in the state. However, despite multiple images of torched mosques and injured Muslim men being taken to the hospital, the police have maintained no damage to people or property.
Rana Ayyub
Ayyub is the most dearly-hated journalist of India. As a Muslim woman journalist, she receives so much contempt on an everyday basis – internet trolls, threats of rape, murder, expletives for being an ‘anti-nationalist’ – in addition to FIRs for money laundering, fake news and more.
Ayyub became popular after her undercover investigative journalism in the 2002 Gujarat riots under the Modi government. Her documentation of conversations with bureaucrats and police officers of the State in her book Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up revealed the role of the government in the anti-Muslim attack.
However, her criticism of the government didn’t end with this. She has spoken up against the Islamophobic and fascist regime of the BJP government on international platforms. Recently, upon raising public funds for Covid relief work during the second wave, she was accused of cheating and misusing the funds.
You can follow her latest work in her newsletter here.
Danish Siddiqui
The Covid-19 pandemic news over the past two years has been driven by stats – number of deaths, number of Covid cases, number of RT-PCR tests and so on. But what did these numbers mean for people waiting in line for a bed in public hospitals for their dying family members?
Siddiqui was one of the few journalists informing us about the dire situation of our public health as we sat inside our homes, locked down to protect ourselves and those around us from the virus. The heart-breaking images that the Reuter’s photojournalist captured during the second wave remained in the hearts of citizens during the lockdown as well as a few months after in August this year, when Siddiqui was killed in a crossfire in Afghanistan while taking photographs.
Without fearing for his life, Siddiqui went everywhere to offer a piercing gaze to his audience – be it his images during anti-CAA protests in Delhi, the Rohingya migration crisis, clashes at the farmers’ protest and much more. Every single frame by Siddiqui remains the biggest critique of any false claim made by the governments in times of conflict.
Nidhi Suresh
The most extensive reportage of Nidhi Suresh has been on the development of the Hathras rape case that took place in September 2020. While mainstream media either did not report on the case, or worst, sensationalised it for a few days to then move on to other sensationalism reporting, Nidhi’s reporting followed up with the conduct of the police and the society with the victim’s family once the case was filed.
In a short-lived world of social media where the life of any piece of news does not go beyond a few days to weeks, the Hathras rape case would have gotten lost amidst a barrage of breaking-news headlines. However, with Nidhi’s commitment to seek truth and justice, her journalism brought change to the family’s pursuit for justice as well as showed us the role of journalism in society.
Her reports on the Lakhimpur incident, the farmers’ protest and unlawful religious conversion in UP have been other examples of her inspiring journalism. She is definitely one of the few journalists to look forward to in 2022.
P Sainath
There will never be a year in the history of Indian journalism when P Sainath’s journalistic commitment will not be looked forward to. Since his work as a correspondent with The Hindu and then under his independent organisation People’s Archive of Rural India (or PARI), Sainath’s voice has been a prominent one in bringing forth rural-centric issues in the news. He has often spoken about how not even 1% of our newspapers cover the news of 60% of India.
With the farmers’ protest that went on for almost the entirety of this year, it has been the most fertile time to aware India’s urban citizens of the shortcoming of our agriculture system. And while many journalists chose to do it by reporting from protest sites, Sainath’s organisation continued with its human-centric stories by going to villages.
As a journalist with 30+ years of work, his commitment to his vision for India has only grown stronger over the years. We hope in 2022, this only keeps growing and hopefully gets caught on by other media outlets as well.
Faye D’Souza
Faye’s journey of shifting from being a popular face on the TV with a top TV network to being an independent journalist has been inspiring for many young journalists out there. Where working extra hours and on holidays, and hustling to the top in corporatised media is expected from all, Faye took a break from this to prioritise one’s personal political ethics as well as mental health.
She became the first Instagram journalist to report the news without nonsense. On her YouTube, she started inviting experts to hold healthy discussions on social, political and economic issues for her audience. These discussions were refreshing from the roaring competitions that happen in the name of debate on TV channels these days. In 2022, we hope to see more such informative discussions on issues that matter, and not just debates on: “Kya bharat ki gaaye bhi nishaane par hai (Are India’s cows also being targetted)?”