Manipur to deepfakes, oil spill: A celebration of good journalism at Ramnath Goenka Awards

From good old-fashioned ground reporting to breaking new ground with advanced technologies, winners used a variety of methods to dig deeper into stories that needed telling.

Among the winners was Nilesh Christopher, who won the award in the Foreign Correspondent Covering India category.

His report for Rest of World focused on the social impact of one of the biggest talking points — AI and deep fakes. As part of his reporting, he used forensic analysis and AI to debunk a politician’s claim and wrote about the “liar’s dividend” — the ability of the powerful to claim plausible deniability of unflattering footage.

Winner of Ramnath Goenka Awards 2023, with the President of India Droupadi Murmu, at New Delhi on Wednesday. (Express Photo by Praveen Khanna)

“The biggest issue I faced was the lack of understanding among local NGOs regarding these technologies… so I had to engage an expert from New York,” Christopher said about his story.

The Indian Express reporters won in two categories — Investigative Reporting and Feature Writing.

While Nihal Koshie, Mahender Singh Manral and Mihir Vasavda won for their stories on the allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct levelled by some of India’s top women wrestlers against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the face of India’s wrestling federation, Shubhajit Roy travelled to Israel in the midst of its war with Hamas.

Ramnath Goenka Awards: President Droupadi Murmu with Viveck Goenka and Anant Goenka.

Ashutosh Mishra from India Today TV won the award in the ‘Politics and Government: Broadcast category’ for his reporting on the Manipur conflict. “Manipur was hardly being reported on, and the existing reporting only focused on the violence. But we wanted to show the plight of the people of the state. We stayed there for 15 days and met several people to show how the state was literally divided,” Mishra said about his story.

A R Venkatachalapathy, winner in the ‘Books-Non-fiction category’, has been following the subject of his book, V O Chidambaram, for the last 40 years.

“I first read about him when I was in Class 10. He was mentioned in my Tamil textbook, but not in the NCERT one. Since then, I have been following him,” said Venkatachalapathy about the inspiration behind his Swadeshi Steam: V.O. Chidambaram Pillai and the Battle Against the British Maritime Empire (Publisher: Penguin Random House). “It was a David and Goliath story. In the Southernmost corner of India, a small-time lawyer decided to take on the might of the British maritime empire, one of the biggest shipping empires of the world.”

P Ravikumar from The New Indian Express won the award in the category of Photojournalism for his haunting photographs that captured the devastation after a massive oil spill in a north Chennai river due to Cyclone Michaung.

He said, “In the aftermath of the Michaung cyclone, I captured a huge oil spill that devastated many homes. We had technical as well as physical difficulties during the story. I fell ill because of how polluted the environment was. The doctor said my lungs were working at 45 per cent capacity.”

Instituted by the Ramnath Goenka Foundation, the awards acknowledge and honour the best of journalism.