WION—Why we need a global news network out of India

When you begin your life as a journalist, all you hope to do is tell the stories honestly. You make sure your stories bring justice and they try and build an egalitarian society of sorts. Many journalists are accused of being left of centre. But the answer is very clear. A journalist strives to give a voice to the unheard.
So, they have no choice but to be left of centre.

Biased story selection

It was many years after I started out as a journalist that I entered the arena of international journalism. I traversed the conflict zones of the world and also covered South Asia for international networks. The stories were myopic and many times their selection was biased.

I was in Iraq and covering a story of a mother who was standing outside a mortuary weeping over her 35-year-old son’s dead body. She was complaining that her son’s nails had been pulled out. The paperwork said that he had died of heart attack. 

He was one of the first casualties that had surfaced from what later became the infamous prison — Abu Ghraib. When we filed the story, there was resistance from the other Western journalists. They said how could we believe this Iraqi mother. The environment was tense in the newsroom. In the end, we prevailed.

The only India stories that made it to the forefront were about poverty, manual scavenging or monkeys. I knew that I couldn’t work in a myopic news environment; I had to tell the stories that were nuanced and looked at all sides of society.

Global news neutrality

For decades, media has been pushing the agenda of a country or a group of countries. Primarily, Western news outlets have occupied that space and push their viewpoint. They come as close possible to an “unbiased” approach, but far removed from reality.

 For an average well-travelled South Asian, the US is as much home as the UK. For a solid journalism network, being unbiased is not a tall order. We understand the shooting in Milwaukee as well as the bomb blast in Balochistan. We have created a team from all parts of the world to be able to comprehend the intricacies of the world.

As journalists, we have to continue to see the world as our own: one world. The successes and failures that we see are successes and failures of us as humanity. So why can’t we look beyond nationalities, religion, ethnicity or language? Why is our news like the present world, divided and jingoistic? In an ideal world, a reporter has no nationality, he will traverse the world, tell stories that need to be told, whether good, bad or ugly. 

Journalists are the eyes and ears of the world. For this reason, the stories have to go beyond press releases, conferences, and studios. The stories have to be about people who are models of their society. The stories have to be about ideas that will help us lead better lives. The stories shouldn’t showcase a particular section as the best and everything else as subservient in some ethnocentric way.

A global platform

The smallest things we cover can have a very large impact. I was in Iraq in 2003. Saddam was captured and I was reporting from Baghdad.

I met a man who had his son in tow, almost the age of my own son. The boy was limping and his mouth was not moving properly. The father told me that while his son was playing football, cross-firing began. A bullet lodged in his head. He went from pillar to post, but to no avail.

I decided to tell his story to the world. A day later, the Greek ambassador arrived in Baghdad and reached out to offer the boy a trip to Athens for surgery. The boy is now living a comfortable life.

News platforms must serve the people beyond the banal needs of the day.  We, as journalists, have the responsibility to help people understand the environment they live in.