The media and the marginalised

Undercover reporters from TV9 pose as clients with hidden cameras and talk to sex workers and their families. Their faces are revealed on a TV programme, using  a script filled with crude innuendos. This is one of many instances of unethical media practices. Yet this report receives the Goenka Award for Best Investigative Report, an award given away by the Vice-President of India.

The media can support progressive policy, or it can drive discrimination. Its handling of sex workers and other marginalised communities has been patently insensitive, writes Nupur Basu in The Hoot, reporting on the Sex Workers’ Freedom Festival in Kolkata.

Festival with a difference, The Hoot, July 31, 2012