Award for Sainath
P.Sainath is one of the seven awardees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award 2007. From the citation:
In the early twentieth century, the press was at the heart of India’s freedom struggle. During those formative years, says Indian reporter Palagummi Sainath, journalism contributed to “the liberation of the human being.” In contrast, he says, India’s press today merely performs “stenography” for big business and the governing elite. As the economy surges, matters that call for the urgent attention of the public and government are ignored in favor of film starlets and beauty queens, the stock market, and India’s famed IT boom. Sainath has taken a different path. Believing that “journalism is for people, not for shareholders,” he has doggedly covered the lives of those who have been left behind.
Here’s an archive of Sainath’s articles.
Journalism is the so-called fourth pillar of our democracy…and it definitely needs to shift its focus…
Comment by The Lass — July 31, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
Good for him! I’m not sure I agree entirely with everything he writes (and I intensely dislike his spurious CEO and poverty correlations that I think he does mainly for effect) but he does a great job documenting things that I wouldn’t have even known about.
n!
Comment by n! — August 1, 2007 @ 3:35 pm