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Tehelka wins four awards
Mumbai press club jury gives top honours to the news magazine
FW Bureau
New Delhi
FOUR JOURNALISTS from Tehelka received the Press Club Awards for Excellence in Journalism under various categories at a function in Mumbai over the weekend. Giving mediapersons a chance to bask in peer approval despite intense competition among publications they work for, the awards were instituted 11 years ago and carry cash awards of Rs 75,000 each.
Vinod Mehta, editorial advisor to the Outlook group, received the Lifetime Achievement Award, given for the first time. He said this award meant more to him than a Padma Shri. During a panel discussion hosted by TV anchor Arnab Goswami, he asked the media to introspect and self-correct, if necessary, when covering sensitive news.
Shoma Chaudhury, Managing Editor, Tehelka, was awarded in the ‘Politics’ category for ‘The Inconvenient Truth of Soni Sori’. This cover story highlighted the case of the 35-year-old tribal woman from Chhattisgarh who was charged with being a ‘Naxal associate’ and participating in five incidents of violence. She was arrested shortly after coming to Delhi to tell her story.
Another award went to Ashish Khetan, Investigations Editor, Tehelka, for the article ‘Where did Rs 8,500 crore of UP’s Health Fund Go?’ It was the first story done by a national publication which gave a 360 degree perspective of the massive National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scam. The story nailed the complicity of the state administration and the systemic rot that allowed misappropriation of funds.
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Shoma Choudhury |
Ashish Khetan
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Rohini Mohan
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Gaurav Jain
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The third Tehelka winner was Rohini Mohan whose report, ‘A Storm Foretold’, sounded a warning about the endangered livelihood of fishermen and their degraded environment, based on a month-long journey along the Indian coast. It pinpointed 10 flashpoints in different states when the tension is reaching breaking point.
The fourth journalist from Tehelka who got an award was Gaurav Jain, for ‘The House We Blew Down’, an indepth analysis of the Aarushi murder case. It was written at a time when the Talwars were formally charged with murder after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had filed a closure report, and questioned the prosecution case in minute detail.
Other journalists whose stories got them prizes were Anusha Subramaniam from Business Today, Nagaraj Gollapudi from ESPN Cric Info, Rafique Bagdadi from Business India and Rishi Shah and John Samuel Raja from Economic Times.
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