Shekhar Gupta
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shekhar Gupta is the Chief Executive Officer of the Indian Express Group of Publications and the Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express, which has been called India's most independent national newspaper.
With its tag-line, "Journalism of Courage", The Express sees itself as standing against the commercialism and commodification of news. Gupta has expressed the view that there is nothing contradictory about great journalism and good business.
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[edit] Career
Gupta began his career as a reporter at the Indian Express in 1977. Today he edits The Indian Express and its Sunday edition, The Sunday Express, which he launched in 2002.
He has taken journalism to cities and states left untouched by the national media. In 1996, at the height of the militant violence in Jammu and Kashmir, Gupta launched an edition of the paper in Jammu and Srinagar. The Express team has won more national and international awards than any other news bureau in that state.
The Express News Service is probably the largest network of reporters, editors and photographers in India today.
[edit] Achievements
In his first stint at the Express, Gupta, then 26, exposed a massacre in Assam that marked a watershed in the region's ethnic conflict. His work in Assam won him several awards and formed the basis of his first book Assam: A Valley Divided, published in 1984.
After six years at the Express, Gupta went to the major news magazine India Today. There, as senior editor, his investigative journalism covered the most important newsbreaks in the country in recent times, from the insurgency in Punjab that led to the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to the war in Sri Lanka.
In 1984, Gupta exposed LTTE training camps in India, prompting many in the government to label him anti-national. He exposed operations of official intelligence agencies in a spy scandal that falsely implicated scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation, a story that was vindicated by the court years later. In an investigation, Gupta travelled across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Germany, the US and the UK, to report extensively on the threat from pan-Islamic fundamentalism, including its links with Osama bin Laden.
[edit] Writer and Public Figure
Gupta's weekly column called National Interest is now in its ninth year. For two years, he has been the host of Walk the Talk on NDTV 24x7.
Gupta has been invited as a guest speaker by several universities and institutions in India and overseas. These include Stanford University, the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs at Princeton University, Infosys Technologies in Bangalore, the National Law Institute, Defence Services Staff Colleges and several other institutions. He is a regular guest and speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos and its India summits.
Besides his book on Assam, Gupta has authored India Redefines Its Role, published by the Oxford University Press under the Adelphi Paper Series of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London, where Gupta worked as a Research Associate. He was also a member of its council. Besides The Indian Express, Gupta's writing has been featured in several newspapers and magazines in India and abroad, including The Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, Newsweek and Le Monde.
[edit] Controversy and Criticism
The Spindian Express blog regularly publishes critical stories about Gupta, who it sees as too close to the ruling Congress Party. The blog has dubbed him a "Wheeler Dealer". [1].
