Project SIREN Award

We are pleased to announce the award winners for the Project SIREN award 2022: 

Project SIREN Award for Journalists 2022 

Hirra Azmat, Reporter at the The Kashmir Monitor has been awarded the Project SIREN Award for Journalists 2022 for her article titled  `Life is beautiful’: IMHANS, SRO set up `Zindagi’ to prevent suicides, promote positive behavior. 

Project SIREN Award for Newspapers 2022 

The Hindu has been awarded the Project SIREN Award for Newspapers 2022 for its consistent high performance on the Project SIREN scorecards measuring responsible reporting on suicide between 1st April 2021 and 31st March 2022. 

Project SIREN Award for Online Publications 2022 

The Hindu has been awarded the Project SIREN Award for Online Publications 2022 for its relative high performance on the Project SIREN scorecards measuring adherence to WHO guidelines for responsible reporting between 1st July 2020 and 30th June 2021. 

About the Award

Launched on 10th September 2020, World Suicide Prevention Day, Project SIREN completes two years 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.

Keshav Desiraju India Mental Health Observatory is pleased to announce the Project SIREN Award 2022:

  1. Award to the Newspaper that performed best on the  SIREN scorecard (2021-22)
  2. Award for the most sensitive and responsible report on suicide (based on submissions)

Submission Criteria:

We invite submissions from individual journalists that have reported or written on suicide in the last year. The submission criteria are below:

    1. Any report or story that focuses on one or several aspects of suicide and suicide prevention (news articles, general commentary, op-eds)
    2. Published in English in either a newspaper or an online publication
    3. Published between July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022
    4. Written by a journalist

Please note mental health experts are not eligible for this award.

All articles will be evaluated based on their adherence to WHO guidelines for responsible reporting on suicide, sensitivity to the subject of the report (person, population or issue at-large) and in the language used, balanced reportage and the accuracy/ veracity of the article.

Submissions are open until 15 August 2022.

Prizes:

  • Award to the Newspaper that performed best on the SIREN scorecard (2021-22)
  • Certificate + Citation
  • Award for the Most Sensitive and Responsible Report on Suicide (based on submissions)
  • Prize Money: INR 10,000 + Certificate + Citation

All submissions for the award will be evaluated by a panel of experts.

Apply here

 

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.