Vidya Krishnan

Last updated

Vidya Krishnan
NationalityIndian
Alma mater Harvard University
Oxford University
SOAS, London University
Occupation(s) Investigative Journalist, author
Known forCOVID-19 reporting
Notable work Phantom Plague (2022 book)

Vidya Krishnan is a health-focused Indian investigative journalist and author, based in Montreal. [1]

Contents

Krishnan reported that she was the survivor of sexual harassment at India Today in 2018 and received online abuse and death threats due to her reporting about the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. [2] [3]

She comes from a tamil brahmin family [4] and is known for her book about Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped our History. [5]

Career

Krishnan started her career in 2003 at The Pioneer newspaper. As a freelance journalist, she regularly writes for Foreign Policy, [6] The Caravan, [7] and The Atlantic, [8] [9] and was previously the health editor for The Hindu . [10]

She has reported on issues including the Rohingya genocide, tuberculosis , the right to health movement, and ethical standards in Indian clinical trials of pharmaceutical drugs. [11] [12]

In 2020, after years of health reporting, Krishnan spoke about navigating high levels of online harassment while reporting on COVID-19 [10] including receiving death and rape threats. [13]

Throughout 2021, Krishnan was critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in India. [14] [15] She spoke about how the pandemic is disproportionately affecting poor people, and that the response is not led by scientists. [16] [17] [18] [19]

Krishnan delivered the Dr C.V.S. Sarma Memorial Lecture at the University of Hyderabad in November 2021, titled Science Denialism & Democracy. [20]

Selected publications

Awards

Krishnan won a Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University to study the impact of behavioral economics on antibiotic use, with a specific focus on self-medication and antibiotic resistance. [12]

In 2017, she received the International Health Media Fellowships award. [23] She has won the Oxford University's global health journalism fellowship, a National Press Foundation fellowship, and McGill University's global health media scholarship. [24]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pandemic</span> Global epidemic of infectious disease

A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. A widespread endemic disease with a stable number of infected individuals is not a pandemic. Widespread endemic diseases with a stable number of infected individuals such as recurrences of seasonal influenza are generally excluded as they occur simultaneously in large regions of the globe rather than being spread worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barkha Dutt</span> Indian television journalist and author

Barkha Dutt is an Indian television journalist and author. She has been a reporter and news anchor at NDTV and Tiranga TV. She currently runs her own digital news channel called 'MoJo Story'. She is also an opinion columnist with The Hindustan Times and The Washington Post.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">N. Ram</span> Indian journalist (born 1945)

Narasimhan Ram is an Indian journalist and a prominent member of the Kasturi family that controls The Hindu Group of publications. Ram was the managing-director of The Hindu since 1977 and its editor-in-chief since 27 June 2003 until 18 January 2012. Ram also headed the other publications of The Hindu Group such as Frontline, The Hindu Business Line and Sportstar, and has been awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India and Sri Lanka Ratna by the Government of Sri Lanka.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laurie Garrett</span> American science journalist and author (born 1951)

Laurie Garrett is an American science journalist and author. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1996 for a series of works published in Newsday that chronicled the Ebola virus outbreak in Zaire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thrity Umrigar</span> Indian and Parsi author

Thrity Umrigar is an Indian-American journalist, critic, and novelist.

Hopewell Rugoho-Chin'ono is a Zimbabwean journalist. He has won numerous awards in journalism and has worked in both print and broadcasting journalism. He was a fellow at Harvard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shankar Vedantam</span> American journalist, writer, and science correspondent

Shankar Vedantam is an American journalist, writer, and science correspondent. His reporting focuses on human behavior and the social sciences. He is best known for his Hidden Brain family of products: book, podcast, and radio program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Soumya Swaminathan</span> Indian and WHO Deputy Director general

Soumya Swaminathan is an Indian paediatrician and clinical scientist known for her research on tuberculosis and HIV. From 2019 to 2022, she served as the chief scientist at the World Health Organization under the leadership of Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Previously, from October 2017 to March 2019, she was the Deputy Director General of Programmes (DDP) at the World Health Organization.

<i>The Wire</i> (India) Indian news website

The Wire is an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website which publishes in English, Hindi, Marathi, and Urdu. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, and M. K. Venu. The publication's reporters have won several national and international awards, including three Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards and the CPJ International Press Freedom Award. It has also been subject to several defamation suits by businessmen and politicians.

<i>The Quint</i> English and Hindi language Indian news website

The Quint is an English and Hindi language Indian general news and opinion website founded by Raghav Bahl and Ritu Kapur after their exit from Network18. The publication's journalists have won three Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards and two Red Ink Awards.

The international #MeToo movement began in late 2018 to manifest in areas of the Indian society including the government, the media, and the Bollywood film industry. In India, the Me Too movement is seen as either an independent outgrowth influenced by the international campaign against sexual harassment of women in the workplace, or an offshoot of the American "Me Too" social movement. Me Too began gaining prominence in India with the increasing popularity of the international movement, and later gathered sharp momentum in October 2018 in the entertainment industry of Bollywood, centered in Mumbai, when actress Tanushree Dutta accused Nana Patekar of sexual harassment. This led to many women in the news media, Indian films, and even within the government to speak out and bring allegations of sexual harassment against a number of perpetrators.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">COVID-19 pandemic in India</span> Ongoing COVID-19 viral pandemic in India

The COVID-19 pandemic in India is a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. As of 14 February 2023, according to Indian government figures, India has the second-highest number of confirmed cases in the world with 44,685,499 reported cases of COVID-19 infection and the third-highest number of COVID-19 deaths at 530,753 deaths. In May 2022, the World Health Organization estimated 4.7 million excess deaths, both directly and indirectly related to COVID-19 to have taken place in India.

Helen Branswell is a Canadian infectious diseases and global health reporter at Stat News. Branswell spent fifteen years as a medical reporter at The Canadian Press, where she led coverage of the Ebola, Zika, SARS and swine flu pandemics. She joined Stat News at its founding 2015, leading the website's coverage of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on journalism</span> Consequences of COVID-19 outbreak for media and publishing

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted the journalism industry and affected journalists' work. Many local newspapers have been severely affected by losses in advertising revenues from COVID-19; journalists have been laid off, and some publications have folded. Many newspapers with paywalls lowered them for some or all of their COVID-19 coverage. The pandemic was characterized as a potential "extinction event" for journalism as hundreds of news outlets closed and journalists were laid off around the world, advertising budgets were slashed, and many were forced to rethink how to do their jobs amid restrictions on movement and limited access to information or public officials. Journalists and media organizations have had to address new challenges, including figuring out how to do their jobs safely and how to navigate increased repression and censorship brought on by the response to the pandemic, with freelancers facing additional difficulties in countries where press cards or official designations limit who can be considered a journalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seema Yasmin</span> British writer and medical doctor

Seema Yasmin is a British-American physician, writer and science communicator based at Stanford University. She is Director of Research and Education at the Stanford Health Communication Initiative. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Yasmin helped to debunk myths about the coronavirus.

Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack is headquartered in San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indian government response to the COVID-19 pandemic</span> Actions by the Indian government on COVID-19 pandemic

The first responses of the government of India to the COVID-19 pandemic in the country involved thermal screenings of passengers arriving from China, the country from which the coronavirus disease 2019 originated, as well as of passengers arriving from other countries. As the pandemic spread worldwide, the Indian government recommended social distancing measures and also initiated travel and entry restrictions. Throughout March 2020, several shutdowns and business closures were initiated, and by the end of the month, the Indian government ordered a widespread lockdown. An economic package was announced in May 2020.

S. Mitra Kalita is a journalist, media executive and author of two books. Her first book 'Suburban Sahibs' is about how immigrants redefined New Jersey and thereby America and her second book 'My two Indias' is economic memoir about Globalization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Najia Ashar</span>

Najia Ashar is a broadcast journalist and media development professional with more than 20 years of experience in Pakistan’s mainstream media. She is the founder & president of Global Neighbourhood for Media Innovation (GNMI), a Karachi-based nonprofit organization working for media development, peacebuilding, and criminal justice system capacity building in Pakistan.

<i>Phantom Plague</i> 2022 book about tuberculosis by Vidya Krishnan

Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped our History is a 2022 non-fiction book about the history of tuberculosis by health journalist Vidya Krishnan.

References

  1. ↑ "Indian journalist Vidya Krishnan on navigating harassment and government obstruction while covering COVID-19". Committee to Protect Journalists. 8 April 2020. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  2. ↑ "#MeToo: India Today's Gaurav Sawant accused of sexual assault; he threatens legal action". National Herald. 13 November 2018. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
  3. ↑ Danner, Chas (2 May 2021). "India Sees 400,000 New Cases in a Day: COVID-Crisis Updates". Intelligencer. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
  4. ↑ @VidyaKrishnan (23 February 2022). "I'm come from a Tamil-Brahmin family like this lady's & have privilege blind elder family members who say unacceptable stuff like this w/o being challenged by younger family members. Caste supremacy is an abominable doctrine. Brahmins need to be called out every.single.time" (Tweet). Retrieved 21 April 2022– via Twitter.
  5. ↑ PHANTOM PLAGUE | Kirkus Reviews.
  6. ↑ Krishnan, Vidya. "Vidya Krishnan". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  7. ↑ "Vidya Krishnan | The Caravan". caravanmagazine.in. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  8. ↑ "A devastating COVID surge takes a fresh toll on Indian journalism". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
  9. ↑ "India cracks down on journalism, again". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
  10. 1 2 "Indian journalist Vidya Krishnan on navigating harassment and government obstruction while covering COVID-19". Committee to Protect Journalists. 8 April 2020. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  11. ↑ Mishra, Veerendra. Combating Human Trafficking: Gaps in Policy and Law. India: SAGE Publications, 2015.
  12. 1 2 "Class of 2021". Nieman Foundation. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  13. ↑ "India: PEN Delhi on the Importance of Press Freedom During Coronavirus – PEN Canada". pencanada.ca. 7 April 2020. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
  14. ↑ Danner, Chas (2 May 2021). "India Sees 400,000 New Cases in a Day: COVID-Crisis Updates". Intelligencer. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
  15. ↑ "Analysis | The world finally woke up to India's virus nightmare". Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved 16 November 2021.
  16. ↑ "Journalist Vidya Krishnan Details the Pandemic's Devastating Impact on India | KCM". Katie Couric Media. 3 May 2021. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  17. ↑ "In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt: A Sobering Reality in India (with Vidya Krishnan) on Apple Podcasts". Apple Podcasts. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  18. ↑ Gopalan, Aparna (19 June 2021). "India's Vaccine Makers Are Pandemic Profiteers, Not Humanitarians". The Intercept. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
  19. ↑ Pal, Alasdair (29 April 2021). "As COVID-19 floods India's hospitals, the better-off also scramble for care". Reuters. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
  20. ↑ "Dr CVS Sarma Memorial Lecture - Science Denialism & Democracy - Vidya Krishnan". School and College Listings. 26 November 2011. Retrieved 2 February 2022.
  21. ↑ PHANTOM PLAGUE | Kirkus Reviews.
  22. ↑ Mandavilli, Apoorva (5 February 2022). "Battling an Ancient Scourge". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 10 February 2022.
  23. ↑ "3 Indian journalists to get International Health Media Fellowship". Hindustan Times. 5 May 2017. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  24. ↑ "Vidya Krishnan". Asia Literary Agency. 21 January 2016. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.