Reporting is driven by curiosity, skill, experience, and, sometimes, pure luck.
Journalists who happened to be in the right place at the right time have delivered some of the greatest scoops in the business. Clare Hollingworth, the great war correspondent who broke the news of the outbreak of the Second World War, figured it out when the wind blew apart a cloth separator at the Germany-Poland border while she was crossing it, and she got a momentary glimpse of tanks parked in the valley below, ready to move into Poland.
While in the hierarchy of journalists, Hollingworth would be somewhere in the upper atmosphere and I in the lower depths of the Pacific, luck is thankfully agnostic in its favours.
It was the 2014 Nobel season and Malala Yousafzai was a favourite to win the Peace Prize. Unlike the science and literature prizes that are announced in Stockholm, Sweden, the Peace Prize is Norway’s territory. The winner is announced by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo in October. This is where the ‘right-place-right-time’ part falls into place.
Arctic programme
I had reached Oslo at the beginning of October for a slew of interviews and to learn about Norway’s Arctic programme. The then-Indian President Pranab Mukherjee was set to arrive in the Norwegian capital a few days later, and a focus area of the visit was India’s Arctic programme at Himadri Station, the base located in Norway’s Svalbard.
After several days of interviews and presentations, by October 10, I was thoroughly horrified by the potential impact of melting polar ice caps and rising sea levels, and had sought refuge in my hotel room. It was then that a sympathetic contact in the Norwegian Foreign Ministry mentioned that my press pass could get me into the Peace Prize announcement at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, a few minutes’ walk away.
Given the chance to break the tension over impending climatic doom with some award-winning drama, I walked into the press meet and hung around at the back of the room. There was considerable buzz among the media since Ms. Yousafzai was in the running; so when the Nobel Committee chair and former Norwegian PM Thorbjørn Jagland spoke her name, two Japanese television journalists standing near me started screaming ‘Malala, Malala’ at their cameras and had to be shushed by the rest of the journalists. By then, I had completely missed the second winner’s name.
Fortune favours even the not-so-bold since, seconds later, the circular with the press statement reached the back of the room, and my brain caught on that Kailash Satyarthi was also a winner.
Framing a question
My body took a few more seconds. Then I rushed to the front row on the authority of my shared brown skin with the winners. That worked, since Mr. Jagland quickly acknowledged my raised hand. It was also unfortunate as I was yet to frame a question with enough gravitas on an Indian and a Pakistani sharing the Peace Nobel.
After a short staring contest with the former Premier, I managed to blurt out a tolerable question which got a passable answer. I plopped down immediately after that to file a copy for The Hindu ’s website , becoming the first Indian to report on that historic event.
