SUMMARY INFORMATION ENTRY NO: 13658 CATEGORY: TV PERSONALITY TITLE: BARKHA DUTT BROADCASTER: NDTV (INDIA) KEY CONTACT: juhit@ndtv.com, [email protected] 10” CLIP TIME CODE- 00:36-01:06
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Barkha Dutt is Group Editor with NDTV, India's premiere news and current affairs network. She is one of India's best known journalists and television anchors and is also the youngest journalist to receive the ‘Padma Shri’, one of the country's highest State honours. In a career spanning seventeen years she has won over forty national and international awards for journalism including the Global Leader for Tomorrow award from the World Economic Forum, the Commonwealth Broadcasters' award for 'Journalist of the Year' and the Asian Television Award for "Best Talk Show." In 2012, she won “International TV Personality of the Year’ at the AIB (Association for International Broadcasting) awards in London and “Best Current Affairs Presenter” at Asian Television Awards in Singapore.
Barkha Dutt emerged as a household name with her frontline war reporting on the Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan in 1999 (http://tinyurl.com/7nt9d52).
Over the past decade she has reported from several conflict zones across the world, including Kashmir, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq cementing her reputation as a fearless journalist who reports from some of the most dangerous places in the world. In 2011 Barkha Dutt spent the early part of the year reporting on the Arab uprisings in both Egypt and Libya (http://tinyurl.com/8yswjvy).
Barkha Dutt is also the host of the weekly, award-winning talk-show, "We the People'' as well as the daily prime time show, 'The Buck Stops Here. Her Sunday talk show ‘We the People’ named after the first three words of the constitution (http://tinyurl.com/3cxq4hg) brings a 100 member studio audience face to face with the newsmakers of the week and has covered issues as diverse as politics, sexuality, gay rights and issues of national security. It is now the longest running talk show on Indian TV.
On ‘The Buck Stops Here’ Barkha Dutt has exclusively interviewed a range of personalities around the world and at home including Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her daughter Priyanka Gandhi ; Pakistani newsmakers like Benazir Bhutto, Imran Khan, Fatima Bhuttoand General Pervez Musharraf ; Authors such as Salman Rushide and Mohammed Hanif, International personalities including Hillary Clinton and His Holiness The Dalai Lama , Aung San Suu Kyi, Tony Blair and actors such as Shahrukh Khan and Jackie Chan.
She is a nominated member of the National Integration Council of India. Several Bollywood films have been based on Barkha Dutt's work, including the critically acclaimed film 'Lakshya'. She was also recognised as an ASIA 21 Fellow by the New-York based Asia Society and now serves on it's Global Council.She studied at St. Stephen's College, Delhi and the Journalism School at Columbia University, New York. She is also the first Meera and Vikram Gandhi fellow at Brown University.
She is active on Twitter (@bdutt) where she is followed by more than nine hundred thousand people.
BIG INTERVIEWS AND PROGRAMMES 2012-2013
The then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Britain’s former Prime Minister and Special Envoy to the Middle East Tony Blair, Myanmar’s pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Opposition leader Imran Khan and superstar Jackie Chan are just some of the key global personalities that Barkha Dutt, India’s best regarded television journalist, interviewed this year.
And when India erupted in protest after the brutal gang-rape of a young woman in national capital New Delhi, Barkha Dutt ran a series called ‘EveryWoman’s Battle’ capturing the pulse of public opinion and putting lawmakers, activists and the architects of the new and stricter anti-rape law face to face with an enraged and enquiring public. When the flash floods ravaged the Indian state of Uttarakhand, Barkha Dutt sent live reports from some of the most inaccessible areas on the extent of devastation and the unimaginable heroism of the men and women in uniform who selflessly brought the thousands of stranded people to safety while putting their own lives at risk.
PAKISTAN ELECTIONS When Pakistan voted in historic 2013 elections, despite a string of virulent terror threats from the Taliban, Barkha Dutt was there sending live reports from campaign rallies and polling booths along with interviews of the top contenders, Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan. The election was historic because it was for the very first time that a civilian government handed over power to another democratically elected government. In an exclusive chat with Barkha Dutt, Nawaz Sharif, who went on to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan, took on the supremacy of the Pakistan Army saying the Prime Minister of Pakistan is the boss, not the Army Chief.
UTTARAKHAND FLOODS COVERAGE In June this year, when Himalayan ‘tsunami’ flooded the Indian state of Uttarakhand reducing much of the temple towns of Kedarnath and Badrinath to heaps of silt and rocks, Barkha Dutt travelled to state. She anchored the special series on NDTV’s 9pm show The Buck Stops Here bringing all aspects of the story to the viewers. Barkha Dutt brought stories of families caught between hope and heartbreak, looking for their missing relatives but refusing to believe the worst. From some of the most inaccessible areas, she brought stories of heroism of the armed forces and the paramilitary, who had no luxury of grief even after losing 20 of their comrades in a chopper crash. She contrasted the selfless soldiers with the shameless politicians who made a beeline to Uttarakhand for a mere photo-op, even fighting over who would take rescued pilgrims back in their aircraft. Barkha Dutt’s tireless reportage featured live interviews with the Army’s General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Central Command, the Task Force Commander of the Indian Air Force and the Director General of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, all of whom were overseeing one of the biggest peacetime rescue operations in Indian history. Barkha Dutt even received a personal letter of gratitude from the Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal NAK Browne for her unbiased and sensitive reportage.
HILLARY CLINTON Barkha Dutt was among six anchors chosen from across the world to question outgoing Secretary of State at a "global townhall." In a candid chat, Ms Clinton spoke of the recent 35- year sentence for terrorist David Coleman Headley and the tragic gang-rape of a young student on a Delhi bus. She was also asked by Barkha Dutt about whether she will run for President of the US. Barkha Dutt’s persistence to get answers to her direct questions prompted Ms Clinton to praise her saying, “that is why you are such a good journalist, Barkha.”
TONY BLAIR In December last year, Barkha Dutt interviewed Tony Blair. She asked Mr. Blair why the world seemed to be siding with the bully rather than the underdog in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and what he thought was the solution to the existential dilemma before the people of Middle East who had to choose between dictatorships that are less fundamentalist in terms of religion but are totally anti-democracy, and democracy which could actually bring more Islamists into politics. Mr. Blair’s views assume a greater meaning now when Egypt’s first democratically-elected government has been overthrown and the world’s democratic superpowers have maintained a stoic silence. He said, “The struggle was always inevitable. We need to support proper democracy. Democracy will moderate politics if it takes roots properly. We have to be on the side of open-minded people.” On Iran, Mr. Blair said, “I think the military option is the last one but I think it’s not wise of the Iranian leadership to face the West with a choice between the military option and nuclear weapons for Iran.”
AUNG SAN SUU KYI Aung San Suu Kyi, one of the most admired iconic political leaders anywhere in the world, a symbol everywhere for the power of one, the power of hope, in a long winding chat with Barkha Dutt, talked about her struggle, her politics and what kept her faith in politics going during the long years under house arrest. During her historic visit to India after becoming a member of Myanmar Parliament, Suu Kyi, in this chat, gave an insight into some incredible moments of personal loss, not being able to meet her husband when he was terminally ill, separated as a mother from her two boys. She was also candid about how she was saddened when India deserted her movement for democracy in Myanmar. The interview encapsulated why Suu Kyi remains a formidable moral agent of change and as her husband once said in a book, the symbol of freedom from fear.
IMRAN KHAN Barkha Dutt also interviewed Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan who led his party in the historic 2013 elections strapped to a hospital bed. She questioned him on the mistakes he made in the elections, what he now saw as the future of Pakistan and his soft stand on Taliban. Considered a media darling by the English-speaking audience and a representative of only the so-called ‘burger kids’, Imran was also questioned on what he thought of social media’s impact on mainstream politics in Pakistan. Imran Khan, in this candid chat, revealed how he felt let down by the Election Commission. He called the 2013 elections the most rigged elections in Pakistan’s history. Imran Khan was unequivocal in saying that the days of patronising the militia were over and it was time for a political solution to terrorism.
JACKIE CHAN And finally, Barkha Dutt also interviewed the master of cinema who rose from being a stuntman to a superstar to now a global icon for philanthropy. Jackie Chan in a candid interview spoke about how he is addicted to living dangerously. He may be touching 60, but still remains a danger junkie.
SPECIAL TALK SHOW SERIES: EVERYWOMAN’S BATTLE At the dawn of the New Year, India saw an outpouring of anger over the gang-rape of a woman in a Delhi bus and led many to ask whether it was an opportunity for systemic change. In a series that held up a mirror to what Indian society thought and felt, Barkha Dutt, for an entire month ran a campaign across India focusing on what she called ‘Every Woman’s Battle’. On her powerful opinion-based show, We The People, she brought average citizens face to face with the lawmakers, activists, legal luminaries and celebrities on issues ranging from marital rape to misogyny of popular culture.