Project SIREN Award—2021
We are pleased to announce the award winners for the Project SIREN award 2021:
Project SIREN Award for Journalists 2021
Geetika Mantri, Senior Editor at the The News Minute has been awarded the Project SIREN Award for Journalists 2021 for her piece titled ‘How the coverage of Sushant Singh’s death was a disservice to mental health reportage’.
Project SIREN Award for Newspapers 2021
The Hindu has been awarded the Project SIREN Award for Newspapers 2021 for its consistent high performance on the Project SIREN scorecards measuring responsible reporting on suicide between June 2020 and June 2021.
To view the winners for the other editions of the Project SIREN award, visit 2022 and 2023.
About the Award
Launched on 10th September 2020, World Suicide Prevention Day, Project SIREN completes one year of assessing media reports on suicide in September 2021. Project SIREN is committed to advocate for better reporting practices on suicide and sees journalists and media persons as crucial allies to support suicide prevention activities. Responsible and sensitive reporting on suicides can help debunk the various myths on suicides, draw attention to the myriad of personal, social and systemic factors that can lead to an individual taking their lives and highlight that suicides are indeed preventable.
In commemoration of the project milestone, Project SIREN is pleased to announce the presentation of two awards, namely:
- Award to the Newspaper that performed consistently well on the SIREN scorecard (2020-21)
- Award for the most sensitive and responsible report on suicide (based on submissions)
Submissions are now closed.
Meet the Panel
Dr. Jaya Shreedhar
Dr. Jaya Shreedhar is a medical doctor and an award-winning health journalist, whose area of interest is public health journalism with a focus on human rights and health governance. Dr. Shreedhar is also an Adjunct Professor, Health Journalism at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, India. Formerly a Special Health Correspondent for Frontline Magazine at The Hindu, she is a COVID-19 mentor and Asia Media Health Advisor for Internews and a WHO consultant.
A.J. Philip
A.J. Philip has held senior editorial positions at the Hindustan Times, the Indian Express and The Tribune. He was the first Director of Pratichi (India) Trust set up by Prof Amartya Sen. He was, until recently, Secretary and Chief Executive of Deepalaya, one of India’s largest NGOs. He writes regularly for the Indian Currents and the Free Press Journal. Apart from writing, he is the Patron of Deepalaya Foundation Inc., based in Houston, Texas, USA.
Tanmoy Goswami
Tanmoy Goswami is a user-survivor and founding editor of Sanity, an independent mental health storytelling platform, based out of New Delhi. He is an incoming fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. As part of his lived experience advocacy, Tanmoy co-facilitates suicide reporting workshops for journalists with CMHLP. Previously, Tanmoy headed the editorial desk at Fortune India magazine, where he won the IE Business School Prize for Economic Journalism in Asia, and was associate editor of The Economic Times Prime. Tanmoy is an alumnus of the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism, CUNY, and St Stephen’s College.
Meera Damji
Meera Damji’s passion for delving into her interests has taken her from an Honours degree in Mathematics (Miranda House, Delhi University) and formally training in Hindustani classical music, to dabbling in advertising, and a career in media. After completing a Post Graduate Diploma in Advertising, Marketing & Communications from Xavier Institute of Communications (XIC, Mumbai), she spent over a decade in radio, hosting a one of its kind show on everyday mental health.
Meera now works as a Research Associate at the Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy, overseeing its communication & outreach. Through her work at the Centre, Meera has been focusing on using different formats to illustrate the importance and relevance of mental health research and policy in everybody’s everyday!
