Tanvi Shukla
News editor and anchor at Mirror Now Tanvi Shukla ended her talk at TEDx last weekend with a quote. The intrepid anchor quoted Charles Dickens – “Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence…” In doing so, she perhaps hinted at how she goes about her job.
How was the move from print to TV journalism?
I loved what I was doing in print. Then I realised that at that age when you’re younger you want to do much more, there’s so much time that we have, so much energy, and so perhaps broadcast would make more sense. It is an extremely gruelling and hectic format. That’s how the switch from print to TV happened.
What are the lessons of print journalism that you took to TV journalism?
In TV journalism we rush to break the news. Then you move on, because we are constantly bombarded by 20 different news items and everybody is rushing to tell it all to the viewers. But from my print experience I learnt that you need to go deeper into some of the stories. And sometimes when you do that you find a bigger story. Even after we’ve broken the story and we’ve moved on… we’ve told the people about it, we go back to it at the end of the day and we dig deeper.. or we follow up and we find out what happened after that. And often what you get is a bigger story.
What according to you are qualities a good reporter has?
Integrity, and lots of passion.
What are some challenges faced by news anchors in a world where other kinds of media, like social media, are important and significant in people’s lives?
What you’re saying, what you’re writing, you have to be a lot more responsible about it. I think the younger generation can multi-task and be on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat etc. We can also learn to do that because that’s the only way you’re going to reach out to those people. And then maybe bring them back to the TV to get the rest of the story. It’s a task to handle five different mediums… but then again, it’s really about passion and if you’re passionate about telling the stories, you will do it on whichever platform you get to reach out to people. Obviously, sometimes, people get carried away, because these mediums don’t have as much accountability. We keep telling even our younger team members that think twice before you put out what you do on social media because somebody’s believing you because you are from the media and they’re going to take your word for it. So don’t just read it somewhere or watch it somewhere and put it out until you know for sure what you are talking about. I think we all need to accept the reality that digital content and news is here to stay. But there is only so much that you’ll get in that space. But like I said, for the nuances of any story… if it’s a decision by the government, if it is a comment that has been made by someone.. for the nuances, for the larger impact and analysis, people still do come back home, switch on their TV and see what news anchors have to say. Or see what the experts who are on our show have to say.