Newslaundry reporters Khushi Mehrotra, Samarth Grover and Astha Savyasachi recount what it was like to report from the ground during the October 10 protests in Delhi.
Abhinandan Sekhri begins by asking how live reporting differs from the investigations Newslaundry usually does, where the pressure is to stay accurate and avoid reacting in ways that could later be called unjournalistic. Khushi, who was a print reporter during the first CJP protest, says on-camera reporting brings a fear of becoming the story.
Reaching the protest site took her and Samarth about two hours, with police turning them back from lane after lane. She says it wasn’t random who got through: PTI and ANI reporters were let in, and an NDTV car went ahead of them.
Samarth says that unlike reporting on the violence of July 20, this time it was “an exercise in exhaustion”, with journalists questioned repeatedly, their credibility challenged, and told to stay on the footpath, away from the detentions. He adds that he sees the police’s conduct as “a system” rather than a matter of good cops and bad cops.
Astha, meanwhile, says it is dangerous for journalism that a policeman was deciding who counted as a journalist. She also explains why she didn’t escalate an incident that happened to her on October 10 when she was detained because she didn’t want to become the story.
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