Senior jounalist Syed Nazakat elected member for GIJN

Senior award-winning journalist from India Syed Nazakat has a huge task in hand --to promote and educate people about investigative journalism in India, and 26 other countries. Nazakat has recently been elected to the board of directors of Washington DC-based Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN), a prestigious global media body, for a two-year term and will be representing the Asia Pacific region. 

Nakazat, who is also the editor-in-chief of the Centre for Investigative Journalism, a non-profit organization promoting the cause of watchdog journalism in India, agrees that investigative journalism at present is restricted just to select media organisations at present.

“The situation is the same is most countries, including India, Pakistan and its neighbouring countries,” Nazakat told dna. He added that most people complain that the atmosphere is these countries is not conducive to investigative journalism and stiff government resistance to media. 

“But the truth is how many journalists file RTIs, go through audit reports an the huge chunks of data available? My aim will be to spread more awareness on the subject,” he said.

However, he said in India there has been remarkable work done by the India media in terms of breaking reports on the Augusta Westland scam, the Adarsh scam, among others.

Last year, Nazakat had also set-up a data journalism start-up called DataLEADS which conducts data analysis, boot camps and runs India’s first data-driven website dedicated to healthcare reporting, called Health Analytics India. 

Nazakat said he is currently looking forward to an worshop on investigative journalism at Nepal in September this year, where training on investigative journalism will be provided to jounalists. Aside that, he periodically conducts trainings across colleges and professionals, a recent one included a workshop for IIT engineers. 

The Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) is an international association of more than 100 media organisations in 50 countries. GIJN holds conferences, conducts trainings, provides resources and consulting, and strengthens and promotes watchdog reporting worldwide. GIJN's second Asian Investigative journalism conference will be held in Kathmandu on September 23-25, 2016.

GIJN reserves six board seats for Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East/North Africa, and North America.