Looking From Outside In (Gasper D'Souza, in ...And Read All Over)

[Goanet Reader]

Looking From Outside In

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Gasper D'Souza

“We have to get out now!” Sonia Faleiro whispered, putting down her notebook. We sat in a makeshift shed in the dusty compound of a desolate brick kiln. The chimneys loomed over us like forlorn sentinels. Here in the higher altitudes of Bhaktapur in Nepal, the normally bustling kiln was bereft of workers. Mahindra Khaimali, the burly owner, agitatedly spoke to someone on the phone. Moments earlier, Ms Faleiro had been questioning him about children working in the brick kilns, and his attitude had changed from sociable to suspicious. I hastily gathered my camera gear as we hurried out.

“Wait!” Khaimali shouted as he moved towards us, still on the phone, “Let's have some tea!”

“No, thank you, we have got to leave,” Ms Faleiro replied. Fifty meters away, our car waited on the narrow, winding mountain road.

A Goan journalist based in the US, Sonia Faleiro was on a story for Harper's

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Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, as the Wikipedia describes it. It was launched in New York City in June 1850, and is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States.

. She called, asking if I'd accompany her as a photojournalist. This was in 2015. A year earlier, she had read a news report in The Hindustan Times. A group of 13 boys had been rescued from Nepal after being abducted from their village in Uttar Pradesh. Sensing a bigger story, she wanted to dig further. Knowing Ms Faleiro and her stories for The New York Times, I jumped at the opportunity.

That was my first encounter with investigative journalism. As it turned out, the HT reporter who reported the news, had neither spoken to the family nor visited the village. I was not surprised.

I began in the media by a happy accident in 2000, thanks to some knowledge about websites and computer software development. The only web news in Goa at the time was to be found through a few pages The Navhind Times published daily on a Goan portal called Goacom. Those were the days of the email lists. The previous day's news would appear online at three the next afternoon for a largely expat readership. I was appointed as Web Edition in-charge at The Navhind Times. I don't think that role even existed before. A few months later, we had our own website, the first for any Goan newspaper, updated every morning.

I reported directly to the editor, although on the rolls I was not in the editorial department. From that vantage point in nowhere land — neither technical, nor journalist — I witnessed the functioning of the media in Goa. It was common to see a journalist pick up the phone, conduct an interview and file a story, never having left his seat. Press conferences were the staple for journalists, based on which most stories were filed. As a result, newspapers generally carried the same lead stories.

For Ms Faleiro, it was not enough to speak to one or two protagonists. It's what's expected of a journalist, she told me, over a plate of sliced raw onions and green chilies in a wayside dhaba. She felt compelled to leave her home in the US, fly down to India — losing her baggage along the way — and drive to the dusty hamlet of Kudiya in Uttar Pradesh along the India-Nepal border, all to experience a story.

Over the next week, we set out on a road trip from UP to Bhaktapur in Nepal, following the ordeal of the 13 kids. We crossed the India-Nepal border in Nepalgunj.

One evening along the way, we witnessed a mini-riot when locals had apprehended some men in an abandoned house. They believed the men were kidnapping children to be taken to Nepal. Ms Faleiro said we needed to witness the incident and so we headed there from the comfort of our hotel. Our puny frames caught in the melee; I tried to capture photographs as best I could.

Later, we headed into the police outpost at Nepalgunj. This was the same outpost, past which the boys were taken to Nepal in the back of a horse cart. How could Ms Faleiro manage to get any information out of the officer? In her quiet but confident style, she confronted him about abductions across the border. Outside his cabin window, people dodged rickshaws and carts as they crossed the India-Nepal border. The officer was on the defensive, but that didn't deter Ms Faleiro from doing her job as an investigative journalist.

I realised the importance of speaking to all sources. And yet, open a newspaper in Goa or the rest of India any day, and it's common to read reports with single sources, unnamed sources or even worse, no sources at all.

Once we got into Nepal, not satisfied with merely hearing about the brick kilns from the rescued boys, we made a long trip to the higher altitudes of Bhaktapur, in south-eastern Nepal, where Ms Faleiro managed to secure a tour of the kiln. Surprisingly, the owner, Mahindra Khaimali, even confided he took in kids to work during the peak season. Nepal was still reeling after the earthquake and as the country rebuilt, the kilns were busy. “We do not check papers,” he said.

But, as Ms Faleiro continued with her questioning about child workers at kilns, Khaimali first got uncomfortable and then angsty. Moments later, he stepped away. We sensed the change. As Khaimali agitatedly spoke on the phone, we hurried to the waiting cab and took off down the hill.

It was a close brush. After all, the brick kiln owners would like to keep their secrets from prying journalists. And a kiln is a perfect place to hide anything. On the mountain slopes of Nepal, I saw just how journalists get their stories. It has nothing to do with armchairs and desks in air-conditioned offices. It was also one of the reasons I was working freelance at the time.

I've not seen visual journalism in mainstream Indian media at the level I'd seen. Newspapers hired photographers who doubled up as photojournalists while shooting weddings and other events. Page One carried AFP, PTI and AP images from the web. Feature stories ran with unlicensed images downloaded from Google.

In 2003, soon after I settled down at The Navhind Times, I was entrusted with the task of redesigning the newspaper. At the time, news design in Goa was a remnant of the old letterpress days. Pouring over publications by the Society for News Design, I had the opportunity to study trends from across the US, Europe and Asia. Award winners like Le Devoir (Canada), Hartford Courant (USA) and closer home, the Taipei Times, stood out as they masterfully wove the written word with amazing photographs and typefaces into bold presentations of news and features to their readers.

We implemented some of these ideas at the NT, which was again a first for Goa. Later, we went on to re-design the newspaper twice, including the first time colour came to Goa's newspapers. For this, I credit the vision of the newspaper's owners and editor.

But, as good as the editorial intentions may be, advertisers finally control the news space across India. News design is the first to be sacrificed, and photography with it. Sometimes, newspapers carried specials but dropped down to the anchor, squished between columns of badly designed ads. Rarely could we accommodate a photograph larger than the standard three-column, let alone powerful photo-essays like those I'd seen in award-winning news publications in the Society for News Design.

In 2007, at the cusp of a visual revolution that was soon to explode, I decided to leave full-time journalism for a freelance career as a multimedia journalist. In 2008, Canon released the 5D Mk2, a DSLR camera that made waves in the video world. Over a feeble BSNL internet connection from Goa, I studied video journalists in Europe and the US as they created short features with stunning cinematography and cutting-edge storytelling.

Magnum, that holy grail in photojournalism I had been following, also caught on to the video revolution with a special sub-site, Magnum in Motion. In this playground, photojournalists like Steve McCurry, Alex Webb, Susan Meiselas, and a host of other Magnum photographers created moving stories using audio along with images.

These developments captivated me, and I began dabbling in multimedia. But back home, there were simply no opportunities for good visual journalism. I got my break in 2012 with Euronews Television and over the next eight years, produced features from across India for the European market with a single backpack and the desire to tell stories. My work has taken me to rural areas I'd never have seen. We covered stories of education, development, health and women empowerment.

Regrettably, I have never produced a similar feature for the Indian media. Television here is oversaturated with shouting matches masquerading as panel discussions. Newspapers don't see the need to add video to their offerings. And so I jumped at the opportunity of working on a hard news story with Ms Faleiro.

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A few weeks after our trip to Nepal, I received a call from Harper's Magazine. The editor at the other end was from the Fact Checking department.

“Did the house you visit have exposed brick walls? Was there a tap in the yard but no running water?” Every little detail that Ms Faleiro had submitted in her story, was now being verified. Some of them I could not remember. That's when my photographs came in handy. “Yes,” I said, “there was a tap in the yard, and yes, it was dry. The walls did have exposed brick.” Prior to that, I'd not heard of newspapers with a desk dedicated to fact-checking. After all, politicians at press conferences could not lie. Could they?

As a small state with a large international following, Goa has the potential to become a hub for high-quality media. Well-produced local stories for a global audience. Community journalism — our stories, told from our point of view. However, none of the home-grown media houses see the need to invest in the visual medium, deep journalism or even the digital space. Journalists are largely left with their little Oppo mobile phones and daily deadlines. Websites of mainstream newspapers in Goa are dumping grounds for regurgitated content from the print edition and television extracts that are simply not meant for online dissemination. Web departments do not exist save for some technician from the print edition who doubles up to post content once a day to the website.

On the flip side, graduates emerging from media schools are savvier as commercial writers and photographers than journalists. Businesses are torn between commercial interests and political wrangling. Often, they are compelled to jump into the frothing broth.

What I write here is not an indictment of any newspaper or group of journalists. I've met many good people trying their best against the odds. I happened to have a perspective from the offices of one newspaper from where I observed proceedings across media houses, across Goa.

What I have written, I have written. Is it fact-checked? I'll leave you, the reader, to be the judge of that.

Gasper D'Souza is the talent who brings aesthetics and design — and more — to journalism. Feedback: g...@gasperdesouza.com

From the book ...And Read All Over, edited by Frederick Noronha, Goa, 1556 2025.