MIJT Conference: Nepal's Dixit delights audience as conference begins

Editor of the Nepali Times Kunda Dixit was the first keynote speaker at the inaugural Media, Investigative Journalism Conference this weekend with his speech Real Journalism and the Virtual World. As the first keynote speaker, his talk stirred much debate about the benefits and pitfalls of new media’s influence on investigative journalism. Dixit said new media can be an outlet for stories that due to commercial pressures within newsrooms would not otherwise get published. However, he admitted that new media does have flaws. “The problem [with the internet] is that you usually preach to the converted,” he said. And the decreasing amount of space available for investigative journalism in mainstream media means that longer, in-depth stories are sidelined, he said. “The internet gives you that space, but even there you are battling very short attention spans.” Focus on people affected As a way forward he suggested multimedia news reports as a way to capture audiences, but warned these pieces need to be the product of in-depth journalism that addresses the people most affected by it. Dixit worked as a ‘parachute’ journalist for the BBC before civil war broke out in Nepal in 1996. He said war correspondents, including him, behaved like soldiers. They went to a bar at the end of the day and spoke in military jargon. However when returning to war-torn Nepal, it was no longer “someone else’s war.” “Journalism schools teach us not to get too involved; to be a spectator,” he said. “But back home I could not.” “We had to look beyond the battles,” he said. “We had to look at the human cost.” Dixit pointed to the discrepancies in reporting; when people from developed nations die suddenly and spectacularly, it is front page news. However, when more people from developing nations die slowly it does not make the news. “It never has,” Dixit said. Dixit said the problem in war reporting in Nepal was that journalists were not involved enough; that there was no space for in-depth stories. Turning to other means Colleagues of his turned to documentary film-making and writing books because they felt the rules of journalism were inadequate. Dixit himself decided to tell Nepal’s story through pictures. “Pictures remind us to remember the brutality,” Dixit said. “And also what the violence does to those who want no part in it.” He believes war is currently fought in the realm of public opinion. “Great care is taken to filter the images of war,” he said. Dixit said this is counterproductive to the reconciliation process. He asked journalists and the Nepali public to provide him raw images of moments in people’s lives during and after the war. As well as this, Dixit dismissed the idea that journalists should solely strive for objectivity while reporting social issues. ‘Objectivity’ versus ‘fairness’ Dixit argued that objectivity seems to be neutral but if the scale of social justice is so outweighed in the favour of the powerful, over women, children and people whose stories are never told, then the problem is perpetuated. “I think it is more important to be fair,” he said. “The scale of social justice needs to be balanced.” The recent release of documents by Wiki Leaks was raised in the discussion following Dixit’s presentation. Dixit argued Wiki Leaks did not break new ground, but merely corroborated investigative journalists’ hard work. “Wiki Leaks, I think, is an example of someone who got famous very quickly, off a leak,” Dixit said. “I see it as being a bit gimmicky, not really investigative.” He did agree, however, that corroborating the information was still a valuable contribution. Frames of War Dixit alluded to his Frames of War photo journalism exhibition which was launched later today. He argued that the best way for the rest of the world to understand the impact of war was to witness that “peace does not come at the end of war.” Dixit said that in the short time he has been in New Zealand, it has been “tremendous to see the sympathy people have for Nepal.” Dixit and his team, including noted Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam and war photographer Shyam Tekwani, looked at over 3000 images and chose 179 for their Frames of War exhibition and their book, The People War. Frames of War will be on display at AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre and open to the public until 18 December.