Spotlight on: Karishma Vyas
The 2018 Walkley Freelance Journalist of the Year takes us behind her winning work.
The award for Freelance Journalist of the Year recognises the contribution freelance journalists make across all media platforms. Karishma Vyas won the gong in 2018 with a body of work that shows a high standard of truly global reportage.
Freelance Journalist of the Year
Karishma Vyas, Al Jazeera English, “Bride and brothels: The Rohingya Trade”“Afghanistan: Asylum denied” “Forced back to Cambodia”
One of her winning documentary pieces for Al Jazeera, “Brides and brothels: The Rohingya Trade”, tracks three Rohingya girls in Bangladesh who were forced into marriage and tricked into prostitution after surviving atrocities in Myanmar.
How did you get started on this story?
I worked in collaboration with the editors of Al Jazeera. It was such a big ongoing crisis, seven hundred thousand people fleeing just in a matter of a few weeks. It was very obvious that the vast majority of people in the camps were women and children, and we wanted to investigate what life was like for them in what has been now called the world’s largest refugee settlement. So that was really where we started, to find the people most impacted by this crisis in Bangladesh and Myanmar and investigate what consequences there were for their lives.
What did it take to get this story up (time, resources, challenges, risks)?
We faced challenges that were really unexpected. When we got to the refugee camps, our crew was for some reason placed under intense surveillance by the Bangladeshi security services. We had at least three different security agencies following us, getting the contact details of the local staff we worked with including our driver, our local fixer and translator.
We became very concerned for the people that we were interviewing. They are refugees living in makeshift tents in a refugee camp, so they are incredibly marginalised and powerless, and we were very concerned that they would face some repercussions after we interviewed them and left.
So we had to suddenly put in place a lot of security protocols in our efforts to protect the people that we worked with, our local driver and fixer, as well as protect the people that were brave enough to speak to us. That meant getting local SIM cards so that we could dispose of, it meant changing cars and drivers almost every day, it meant having to change our schedule everyday — leaving before dawn, coming back at different times — just so we didn’t put people that we were working with at risk.
What impact did the story have?
The problems here are so massive that it would be foolish to think that one report would change all of those things. But we did contribute to raising public awareness about what the conditions are like in the camps, about the testimonies that survivors are telling us, about what happened in Myanmar, about what caused them to flee and I think that’s incredibly important. If nobody knows about what is happening in that country then the Governments, the UN and other agencies really have no incentive to focus on this problem and do something about it.
I feel in this day and age there is an empathy deficit. A refugee crisis in one form or another has been going on for decades, particularly in Australia, and there is a sense of refugee fatigue. People are tired of hearing about the plight of refugees. I am hoping through our report, by putting faces and names to numbers, that people will again become interested in what’s going on.
What have you learned from being a freelance reporter?
When people say “You’re a freelance reporter” — they have an idea that you’re kind of sunning yourself on the deck, drinking margaritas most of the time and then every now and again you come out with a little story.
Being a successful freelancer is a full time job — constantly looking for story ideas, researching stories, talking to people, pitching stories. The downside is unfortunately you don’t get paid for all of that work, you only get paid for a very small fraction of the work you actually do.
But the great thing about being a freelancer is most of the time you are working on stories that you are passionate about telling, you really follow your interests and passions.
What made you want to be a journalist?
It is the best job in the world — you have a passport as a journalist to go anywhere, you can talk to anyone and ask them anything, and more often than not they will actually answer you. It’s not for everyone of course, but it is definitely for people that are innately curious about other people, other cultures, other countries, and even about their own community. You get paid to ask questions and you get paid to learn. So I think it is an incredibly satisfying job.
What are you most proud of about the stories you’ve told?
It’s a cliché, but we do give voice to the voiceless and that’s an incredibly satisfying feeling, because they have no other way to get their stories told. Often you meet people who are going through the best time of their life, or the worst time of their life, and it is a privilege to be a part of that and to help communicate and to raise awareness about their life. It is also really rewarding to bridge that gap between those kind of people and the rest of us — by focussing on our common humanity.
What’s your message to Australians about why quality journalism needs their support?
I think journalism shouldn’t been seen as a novelty, or a luxury — I still believe it is an indispensable part of a functioning democracy. People get upset at journalists because we can be combative or critical — but that’s what we are meant to do. It is very idealistic, but I think a thriving independent press is a sign of a thriving independent democracy, and isn’t that what we as Australians strive to be?
Tell us the best thing about receiving this award?
The best thing about this award is that it comes from my peers and that it comes from my country.
It is just an incredible and special feeling, because I built my career mostly as a foreign correspondent and I have received awards overseas before. But this is the first time I have actually gotten any recognition in Australia so it is a huge deal to me. At the end of the day we all want acceptance and recognition from our community — so that’s what the Walkleys really is to me.
Karishma Vyas is an Emmy-nominated freelance journalist who has covered conflict and social upheaval across Asia for almost 20 years. Her reports and documentaries have been featured on Al Jazeera English, Time Magazine, and the New York Times. She continues to report on untold stories from Afghanistan to America, focusing on covering marginalised communities.
Visit her website Makara Pictures.
Follow her on twitter @KarishmaTV.
See all the winners of the Walkley Mid-Year Awards here.
The Freelance Journalist of the Year Award is supported by:
Interview by Gemma Courtney, The Walkley Foundation
