Conversations with Ramnath Goenka awardees: Barkha Dutt on why Kashmir has left an impact on her

NDTV Consulting Editor Barkha Dutt won the Ramnath Goenka award for Broadcast, 2013. Dutt received the award for her series from the Line of Control in Kashmir, including her reports on the Keran encounter.

You can watch the special episode of her show, The Buck Stops Here, on the Keran encounter:

In an email conversation, Dutt talks about her love for Kashmir and tackling online hate.

You’ve won the award for reporting from Kashmir, which you described as your first love in a tweet. What is it about the place that gets you excited as a journalist and storyteller?

I suppose the majesty of its beauty, the heartbreak of its tragedy, and the warmth of its people have left a deep impact on me. It’s also the one reporting assignment I have followed the most closely and consistently. It’s been my beat for two decades, my home away from home.

NDTV (and you) are always at the special receiving end of online hate. How do you handle this? Does it affect your confidence on certain days?

No, it doesn’t affect my confidence since I think I recognise how polarised and politicised all exchanges on social media have become. Some days it may hurt a little bit, when people feel the need to slander you and make up husbands for you as if that is the only way they can explain you — through fictional marriages! How utterly sexist.

If you had to give the award to a journalist in the same category as yours (reporting from J&K and northeast), who would you give it to?

To my two brilliant colleagues in Srinagar — Nazir Masood and Zaffar Iqbal, who know so much more than me and from whom I have learnt a lot.

Finally, any advice you’d like to give to youngsters who want to join television news?

Don’t join it to be on TV or to look good under the lights. Join it if you love the adventure, the madness, the adrenalin and have the relentless curiosity it calls for.