I Am A Journalist, Full Stop

Chronicling the journey of remarkable women in Indian journalism. No boring stories, some boring story-telling.

WrittenBy:Deepanjana Pal
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At the start of her contribution to Making News, Breaking News, Her Own Way, the deputy editor of The Hindu, Nirupama Subramanian writes,“When I heard about receiving the Chameli Devi Jain Award, my immediate instinct was to call the awards committee and make the following declaration: ‘Thank you for thinking I am deserving of this award, but I regret to say I cannot accept it because I do not think of myself as a ‘woman journalist’. I am a journalist, full stop.’”

Subramanian received the award in 2008, almost 30 years after the Chameli Devi Jain Award had been set up. Her prickly response to being put in a category because of her gender is perhaps as good an indicator as any of the shift in our social dynamic.

The Chameli Devi Jain Award was set up in 1980. It was named after the first Jain woman to go to prison during India’s freedom struggle. She’s an interesting figure because, as becomes obvious from the little bio written by Jain’s daughter in-law, Chameli Devi was held up as an ideal because she managed to engage in political protests without straying from the traditional expectations ‘as the centre of the family aanga’. Back in the Eighties, this was what was considered women’s empowerment: expecting her to be a superwoman who effortlessly juggled personal and non-personal commitments. If the demands made of women are marginally more realistic today, then among the people we need to thank are the women named in the list of awardees at the end of Making News, Breaking News, Her Own Way.

When columnist NeerjaChowdhury was awarded the Chameli Devi Jain Award in the Eighties, it was important to stress that a woman was capable of covering something other than flower shows, a standard assignment for young women reporters in that era. (At least three of the contributors mention these flower shows with acidic distaste.) By the time Subramanian joined the Chameli Devi Jain sorority, the Indian media could boast of a number of prominent women journalists. The fact that women make good journalists no longer needed to be emphasised. Now, the concern is that women shouldn’t be treated as though they’re special or differently-abled because of their gender. Consequently, for the 2009 Chameli Devi Jain Award winner, TiamerenlaMonalisaChangkija, gender discrimination seems to be a socio-cultural problem, rather than a personal struggle. Making News, Breaking News, Her Own Way is something of a chronicle that tries to tell the story of how women were able to make a real, palpable impact upon India’s socio-cultural fabric with journalistic work.

Turn to a television news channel today and chances are you’ll see a woman journalist either reporting on a story or anchoring a program. Flip through the pages of any magazine or newspaper and a heartening number of the bylines belong to women. Yet, not so long ago, editors complained that women used jobs in newspapers as ‘a waiting room for marriage’ while refusing to give them assignments that would let them prove their skills and commitment to journalism. Making News is filled with vignettes that show how women journalists convinced themselves and their colleagues of their abilities.

When the legendary PrabhaDutt, who is perhaps now better known as BarkhaDutt’s mother, was told by her editor that she couldn’t cover the Indo-Pak war in 1965, she took leave, landed up at Khem Karan and began sending back dispatches that were too compelling to not publish. UshaRai ended up covering education because male journalists didn’t want that beat. They probably ground their teeth in frustration when Rai’s coverage paved the way to a job with The London Times. SevantiNinan’s question to her editor when she was sent off to villages as a rural reporter was, “But where am I supposed to stay?”.But she didn’t let the fact that bathrooms were rare finds in rural areas affect the quality of the stories she filed. BarkhaDutt’s first challenge while reporting from Kargil during 1999 was convincing the Army that she didn’t need preferential treatment – “a quick duck under a tree or behind a stone was a happy substitute for a loo”.

The eye-opener in Making News isn’t that India has produced some remarkable women journalists but that journalism has made a tangible difference in the country’s social reality. The stories these women wrote helped change laws and improve conditions. Often they faced immense opposition, both from within the media establishment as well as society at large. SheelaBarse was hauled up by the Bombay Union of Journalists for “using information acquired as a journalist to assert constitutional rights through courts”. Barse’s response was simple: an article in which she stated she suggested expanding “the limits of journalistic conventions to fit my values and constitutional concerns.” One of the most interesting pieces in Making News is by Pakistani journalist Rehana Hakim, who writes about how the magazine Newsline was set up by a group of idealistic women in a climate that had little tolerance for investigative reporting.

In comparison to the stories told by these women journalists, today’s cacophonic television debates and largely bland newspaper reportage seem almost ridiculous. Almost every journalist in Making News bemoans the state of the media today. The need to score TRPs, the perception that media outlets are open to doctoring news, the money that exchanges hands in the process of telling stories, the absence of idealism – these are among the complaints that surface repeatedly. And these women journalists, who fought to make space for themselves in the all boys’ press club, seem incredulous that there is so little resistance to these corrupting forces.

While many of the stories are inspiring, the problem with Making News is that very few make for compelling reading. While some of the writers have provided detailed accounts of the times in which they began their career or the projects that earned them their Chameli Devi Jain Award, a few have written vague love letters to their profession. One can’t help wishing there were more angry, opinionated pieces like TeestaSetalvad’s, or stories rich with anecdotes like BarkhaDutt’s and Rehana Hakim’s. Anita Pratap, who won the Chameli Devi Jain award in 1997, writes in her piece,“We are told serious issues are boring. But as I tell journalism students: ‘There are no boring stories. Only boring story-tellers.’”

Pratap presents her pronouncement while arguing that if the stories are told well, then goodjournalism wouldn’t result in low TRPs. While Pratap is one of the better storytellers in the volume, her saying holds equally true when describing what makes a significant number of the pieces in Making News boring reading. All these women are remarkable and the work they’ve done is inspiring. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make always them the best tellers of their own tales.

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