Finding journalism inspiration in India
Oscars comes to screeching halt when Will Smith slaps Chris Rock on stage
The Front Page
Morning Update
Monday, March 28, 2022
By Ken Tingley
Sometimes you have to go halfway around the world to find inspiration.
Khabar Lahariya (means Waves of News) is a small Hindi language newspaper in India’s rural northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Its reporters and editors are all women, many “untouchables” or Dalits from India’s ancient caste system, with little education.
Yet, they are making a difference.
The newspaper has survived for two decades despite the obstacles against it. It began making the transformation to digital in recent years.
Dalits are still shunned in society and the reporters and editors often have to be discreet about their family upbringing to do their job. Most have little education, but have learned to be journalists with reporters and editors mentoring each other.
One similarity between India and the U.S, is many still don’t understand the practice of journalism.
While reporting one story about mining accidents where the company is run by organized crime, chief reporter Meera Devi has to explain to workers she just wants to get the workers side of the story.
One man confronts her and says she will ask for money to tell their side of the story.
Devi explains how journalism works, that she is looking to just get the facts and she does not take bribes.
“I believe journalism is the essence of democracy,” Devi says early in the Oscar-nominated documentary Writing with Fire. “We are the media by which people can get their rights.”
That statement from a women with little education who lives in a hut took my breath away. It has never been said better.
But the disconnect between regular people and those practicing journalists is similar to what we are seeing in the United States.
The work, passion an dedicationof these women is inspirational.
While investigating gang rapes in one village, the police chief claims he knows nothing about the accusations of rape, even after being confronted with a police report. The reporter says she is skeptical that is the case.
At the reporter’s home, there is a conversation between her and her husband. He indicates she should be at home doing household chores instead of out late reporting stories. He tells her it is unseemly for her to be out late at night doing her work. She fights back that her work is important and has value.
The next day she is back reporting stories.
Writing with Fire gave me hope that journalism can survive.
That it can flourish in other places in the world and make a difference.
But there is also this: The film ends with the sobering fact that 40 journalists have been killed in India since 2014.
Did that really happen?
If you took a pass on the Oscars last night, you missed one of the most dramatic moments ever.
After comedian Chris Rock made a crack about the short hair of Will Smith’s wife, the best actor nominee strode on to stage and took a swing at Rock. It appeared the actor hit him on the chin with his open hand.
ABC TV immediately cut the sound, but uncensored clips showed an angry Smith screaming at Rock at the top of his lungs.
It was an ugly scene at the Oscars.
Minutes later, Smith won the Best Actor Oscar.
And what was said afterward.
Old message
I was watching an old 1949 movie this weekend called “Letters to three wives.”
There is a brief passage where a school teacher (Kirk Douglas) argues with a couple of radio owners about the value of its commercial message.
The characters asked, “Shouldn’t you be asking if cigarettes cause cancer?”
And this was 1949.
Interesting that there was not much smoking in this movie.
Still dying
Due to the low infection rate, Washington County is still not reporting its data daily. But people are still dying. A nursing home resident died this past week and it was not reported in the newspaper until Sunday.
I like Chris Rock and I’m glad Smith won finally!
Can’t wait to see Writing With Fire. India has a monumental problem with rape too. Inspirational women!