Five Most Famous Indian Journalists

chillibreeze writer — Zubina Ahmed

60 hours of live television at the best of times is impossibly difficult. But when it involves an ongoing precarious terrorist operation, it throws up challenges of a kind that none of us have ever dealt with before. Even those who have reported for years, on conflict, war and counter insurgency weren’t prepared for what we encountered in Mumbai. They are the faces that brought India the news from ground zero. From the ghastly Mumbai terror attacks to the successful launch of Chandrayaan, these are faces that bring us stories and have become a part of our lives in doing so.

The term ‘ethical journalism’ is very important in this context, since journalists must hold themselves accountable for the reports they make. However, amidst this rat race of breaking and making news, there are some superstars who have kept the spirit of the ‘news’ intact. Here’s presenting the top 5 television journalists in India.

Being an ex CNN-IBN employee, my first credentials obviously goes to Rajdeep Sardesai. At 43, he is arguably the most well-known broadcast journalist in the country today. From being the brainchild of CNN-IBN, to a husband and a father of two, he is a versatile master breaker. His skillfully-handled debates in the award winning show, ‘The Big Fight’, and his on-site news reporting of the Gujarat riots speak volumes about his brilliance. He has been awarded time and again for excellence in media journalism.

She could be labeled as the Christiana Amanpour of Indian News. Speak of NDTV and you cannot forget to mention Barkha Dutt. Professionally, Barkha boasts of a career marked by milestones. Her frontline reporting of the Kargil conflict in 1999 raised her to prominence. She has done on-site news coverage on umpteen conflicts in Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Her most recent milestone was the coverage of the Tsunami Disaster in South India. Her simplistic approach and sensitive yet sensible interaction with the masses have made her the most viewer-friendly journalist today.

Now to the man who is leading NDTV's new media team, the soft-spoken star journalist of NDTV, Vikram Chandra. Besides being the senior editor of NDTV, Chandra serves as the CEO of NDTV.com too. In many ways, he has helped NDTV.com grow virtually from scratch to one of India’s most popular websites. Known as a reporter par excellence with more than a decade of experience in TV journalism, Chandra has been named "Global Leader for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum in Davos. Vikram’s simple and lucid style of delivering news immediately struck a chord with the Indian audiences.

The father of television journalism in India, Dr Prannoy Roy, is an inspiration to many. Chairman and Director of NDTV, Dr. Roy brought the country to the edge of its seat with his innate knack of translating the complicated facts of election politics and budget number crunching into straight-to-the-point analyses. Several years and thousands of anchoring hours on, he has questioned and examined salient facts about how news affects his viewers’ lives.

Speaking about journalists, none can overlook the quick suave interviewer Karan Thapar. Not known for putting his guests at ease, Karan Thapar is nevertheless one of the most widely recognized anchors and interviewers of Indian television. There is no one like him when it comes to asking grueling questions and bowling over the guests who come to his shows. Shows like the Face-to-Face series on BBC, Eyewitness on Doordarshan, In Focus with Karan, In the Line of Fire and the recent Devil’s Advocate on CNN IBN have always managed to be very gripping because of Karan’s confrontational and incisive style of questioning the guests.

Even presenting an endless list of names doesn’t fill in the spaces. In journalism, we know that praise and criticism are twins that travel together. And we welcome both and try and listen to both carefully. India has bigger lessons to learn and larger points to mull over, than to expend energy over which television journalist tops the charts or falls to the bottom. The viewer has his own way of settling such matters. And the last word belongs to him.

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Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in August, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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—About our writer:

Zubina Ahmed is currently an assistant producer with a leading news channel, TIMES NOW. She was a desk editor with CNN-IBN for two years and has written and edited scripts. She has also done features writing with the ‘The Statesman’ where she covered topics ranging from entertainment to campus to city news.

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