Newsclick Scribe Among Those Awarded by UNICEF, Kolkata Press Club for Development Reporting

Kolkata: Newsclick senior journalist Sandip Chakraborty, along with those of Times of India and Times Group’s Bengali daily Ei Samay, Ganashakti and Urdu daily Akhbar-E-Mashriq, given the  ‘Journalistic Excellence Award’ by UNICEF in collaboration with the Press Club Kolkata, for development journalism 2024. The award ceremony was held on Monday, July 22, 2024 in Kolkata.

The three reports for which NewsClick was selected among the awardees were based on child marriages, the unfolding ecological disaster in Sandeshkhali region and on the syncretic worshipping culture in Sunderbans.

The award consists of a memento, a framed certificate, and a plant and uttoriyo (a stole).  A story grant of Rs 9,500 was also given to the awardees for writing two stories on child rights before November 24, 2024.

A UNICEF communique said: “In the last 3 years, UNICEF in collaboration with Press Club Kolkata organised workshops on development journalism with an emphasis on ethical and evidence-based news reporting in various districts of West Bengal. Training journalists on fact checking, story-telling, use of artificial intelligence in news presentation and ways to enhance the quality of news reporting were the primary purposes of these workshops. Nearly a thousand junior, mid and senior level journalists of Kolkata and districts received the training during this period.”

It said after the series of workshops, 26 journalists were selected for the next phase of 'Media Mentorship Programme', following a “thorough evaluation of their audio-visual, print and audio news reports by a set of senior journalists and experts from outside the project.”

These journalists, called 'mentees', received “handholding from senior journalists” (like Mrinal Chatterjee, Director of Indian Institute of Mass Communications, Dhenkanal, and Amal Sarkar, former senior editor with the Times Group) since the launch of this mentorship programme on December 8, 2023 and published their reports in newspapers, radio stations, television channels and news portals.

Finally, six mentees were shortlisted following an external evaluation and became eligible for awards on the basis of quality and number of their news reports, said the communique.

The mentees include Aafreen Haque, the assignment editor of popular Urdu daily Akhbar-E-Mashriq. She wrote articles on child development during the project.

Anirban Dey, Berhampore correspondent of Bengali daily Ganashakti, was awarded the fellowship for his articles on child marriage and other issues that affect the women and children of the district.

Anwesha Bandyopadhyay, assistant editor of Ei Samay, Times Group’s Bengali newspaper, received the award for her stories on children and other issues, like child trafficking, child rights and gender justice.

Bedanta Chatterjee, a young reporter of IMAGIN Community Media based in Murshidabad, was selected for coverage of issues that affect children's lives in the district.

Sandip Chakraborty, senior journalist with NewsClick, was awarded for his reports on prevention of child marriage and other developmental stories from the Sunderbans.

Sukumar Mahato, Berhampore correspondent of The Times of India, also wrote on issues of child marriage and teenage pregnancy in Murshidabad district, as per the UNICEF release.

Suchorita Bardhan, communication specialist, UNICEF West Bengal, and one of the main initiators of the programme, told NewsClick: “Unicef is mandated to work for the well-being of the children and we ensure that every right of the child is ensured. While working with the children, we also engage with various stakeholders, including the media, because we believe that in the public domain also there needs to be the voices of the children, of the children and by and children…. However there have been instances when the news has been more reactive when a child has been deprived of certain rights or is under certain violent conditions. Unfortunately, the survivor is victimised twice.”

She said there were laws in India, like POCSO (on child sexual harassment) and JJ Act (on juvenile justice), but programmes like this were “also an opportunity to inform and orient media to actually to do the news as well as same time respect the confidentiality of children.”

Bardhan said UNICEF Bengal had been working with Kolkata Press Club for quite some time and was  trying to promote development journalism, “which is based on two tenets. One is evidence based and the other is ethical reporting. Evidence based reporting acts on premises of minimising ficationalisation and qualifies news as facts are laid out. We did  a lot of workshops across of West Bengal giving discourses on skill transfers like fact-checking , AI, and digital methods....”

She said: “We thought of a mentor-mentee programme where a mentor can have four to five  active reporters under him/her, train them and see how the stories can be  sharpened more”.

Bardhan felt that “this type of close interaction with senior journalists benefits, especially the younger journalists” adding that “We will find a format and be more generous, especially to those working in districts,”

Amal Sarkar, one of the mentors, who worked with four mentees, told NewsClick, that development journalism was not propaganda based, as is a common belief. “Rather, it is a tool to encourage the penchant for development in the minds of the people. It must be technically sound and should be beneficial across generations.”

He said planning in India was “top heavy”, not development-oriented and full of populist measures. “Populist policies work for politics only….Development journalism is for the people, by the people, of the people,” he said, adding UNICEF  and Kolkata Press Club should be applauded  for facilitating a learning curve to senior journalists as well as to budding ones from various districts of West Bengal by arranging such like training programmes, awards  and lectures aimed to enhancing their skills.