Aniruddha Bahal talk on Investigative Journalism in India

I had the opportunity of attending a talk by Aniruddha Bahal on Tuesday. This event was part of the Singapore Writers Festival, which is currently underway. I have been a reader of Outlook ever since it was launched in the mid 90’s and hence have closely followed the articles written by Aniruddha Bahal.

(Pic Courtesy – Akshay)
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Aniruddha Bahal spoke about the way he went about exposing the Defence Establishment in India. The turnout was pretty small. I don’t know whether it has to do with the publicity or the nature of the topic. I wasn’t aware that Aniruddha Bahal had moved out of Tehelka. At one point he had as much as 20 bodyguards as he had some life threats.

At a broader level, he felt that the Mainstream Media is not willing to touch Investigative Journalism as it doesn’t fit into their commercial and business interests. It is the niche investigative magazines like Tehelka that are pursuing this aggressively. Indian Express, Tehelka and Outlook (to some extent) have been the only guys who have pursued investigative journalism in its true form. Not sure whether Indian Express really benefited from it commercially. Other MSM folks have shied away from this domain so that they can be in the good books of the establishment. According to Bahal, some of the MSM doesn’t even have dedicated teams looking at some of these stories. They just work on day-to-day stories.

Aniruddha Bahal has authored a book as well. He is currently working on his second book. He says that authoring such books gives him the financial freedom to pursue other things. Bahal also promised to put more life into his website. It is currently serving as a news aggregator.

Preetam Rai has a podcast of the whole talk. Do listen to it if you have the time and the inclination.

Some more blogging related topics will be discussed at the SWF over the weekend. Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing will also be part of some of these sessions.