Inside the Story: How Local Reporters Uncovered the Truth about CNN’s Coverage from Nepal
Read the main story
here.
Cristi Hegranes & Krista Kapralos
BLOG: We did not seek out this story. In truth, we believe its significance pales in comparison to the other topics we routinely cover. But when GPJ’s Nepal team got a tip that a major news channel reported a false story about a young girl, we began our investigation.
Eight years after we opened our news desk in Nepal, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake flattened portions of the country. In that moment, Global Press Journal reporters were suddenly both victims of a disaster and journalists tasked with covering it.
As longtime followers of our work know, Nepal was the beginning of our story. That’s where our founder, Cristi Hegranes, was working as a freelancer when she realized that foreign correspondence is a limited and troubled discipline. Shortly afterward, she founded Global Press Institute, the parent brand of Global Press Journal, with one goal in mind – to increase access to information and real stories, giving the world a fuller picture of developing communities.
Our reporters are local women whom we train at Global Press Institute and then employ to report for Global Press Journal. These women come to us for two simple reasons: to tell ethical, accurate stories from their own communities and to earn a living as professional journalists. They have proven the power and the reality of our mission time and again. Our reporters look beyond the squabble of politics and the sorrowful stories of poverty and disease that delight international news pages. They dig beyond the glitz of disaster.
That was true in the days and weeks after the April 25 quake in Nepal. Unlike foreign correspondents, their coverage explored untouched aspects of the disaster and, as always, gave voice to local sources whose stories are not often told by the foreign news organizations that descend on developing countries in the aftermath of disaster. Building on our reputation as a world-class local news organization, our journalists have established contacts with local sources.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="240"]
Reporter Shilu Manandhar photographs Sandhya Chalise in her home village of Ramkot. by Rachana Upadhyaya, GPJ Nepal[/caption]
It was such sources who led us to an uncomfortable truth about CNN’s post-earthquake reporting from Bir Hospital in Kathmandu: While the cable channel reported that its chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, performed brain surgery on Salina Dahal, an 8-year-old girl injured in the April 25 quake, Salina never underwent surgery of any kind.
That truth came to Global Press Journal in May, when a local tipster insisted on sharing it with our local team, calling the GPJ team “the most trusted journalists in Nepal.”
All of the editors agreed that reporter Shilu Manandhar was the right person for the job. Shilu joined GPJ in 2012 after working in local media. In her years with our team, Shilu has consistently proven herself to be a natural storyteller, a trusted reporter and a brilliant photographer.
We worked for weeks to check and double-check information, comparing Shilu’s reporting notes with multiple CNN videos, headlines and text stories that all claimed that Salina Dahal (which CNN misspelled Selena Dohal) had undergone a craniotomy to treat multiple skull fractures and blood clots. Those claims had gone viral across the globe.
We heard various versions of what happened that day at Bir Hospital. Some doctors said Gupta hadn’t performed any surgeries, but only observed. Their stories changed, and in follow-up interviews one said Gupta had provided some assistance. Raw footage from CNN helped us realized that Gupta did in fact have a large role in the operation – just not on Salina.
To complicate matters, our team was having trouble finding the girl, the patient who appears on the CNN videos. Shilu –who earned major cred last year when she traveled for three days, partly by donkey, to get a story on climate change in the Tibetan Plateau – headed out to the area where CNN said the girl lived. At a crossroads, a few locals sent her down a path they said would likely lead to the girl. She checked at hospitals and clinics, scoured neighborhoods and asked around in marketplaces. No luck. Shilu circled back to doctors at the hospital, who suggested that she check in an entirely different area. That trip took a full day, and when she returned to Kathmandu, Shilu was no closer to finding Salina.
Our break came when we pulled more reporters into the project. We asked GPJ Nepal News Desk veteran Tara Bhattarai to help us look for Salina, and within hours our inboxes pinged with a message that included photographs of two girls on hospital beds. Tara asked, could one of these girls be the one you are looking for?
There, in one of the photos, was Salina Dahal, the girl we’d watched so many times on the CNN videos. In the photo, she was even wearing the same shirt she’d worn in the CNN footage. A local photographer had captured images of the injured children at Bir Hospital. Each photograph was clearly marked with a name and home village.
Shilu set out for the region where CNN originally said Salina lived, but this time she had the name of a specific village. The roads were too rough for most cars to pass, so Shilu completed the journey on foot. There, she found Salina, as well as her young twin brothers, her grandmother and her grandfather.
Salina’s grandfather, who had accompanied her to Kathmandu for medical treatment after the quake, confirmed that Salina had never had surgery of any kind. When Salina returned home from school that day, he showed Shilu bumps the girl suffered to her head when a neighbor’s home collapsed around her in the earthquake. Shilu confirmed that Salina’s head bore no scars, stitches or any evidence of a surgery.
Shilu showed Salina and her family the CNN videos. The family had never heard of the cable channel and knew nothing of Gupta. They had no idea that Salina had been the subject of an international news story.
But after we found Salina and confirmed she was not Gupta’s patient, we knew we had one more person to find – the one who had been on Gupta’s operating table.
Interestingly, it was CNN’s own coverage that led us to the patient – Sandhya Chalise. CNN’s original report on the surgery, a text-only draft, got nearly everything correct. Sandhya was the patient. Salina, also described in the early version, had a broken wrist and a head injury. But a doctor quoted by CNN confirmed that Salina would be fine.
Then, that version of the story mysteriously disappeared. And was replaced with a new version, this time accompanied by videos of Salina – a tiny, adorable girl who was badly banged up. Now she was said to be Gupta’s patient.
So, Shilu had a new task – to find Sandhya.
In another difficult journey that came complete with wrong turns, bad directions and remote terrain, she did it again. She found Sandhya.
Sandhya was fine. She had had brain surgery, but the operation was a success. She was recovering well and was even back in school. On the day Shilu visited, she found Sandhya in her school uniform. In photos, her scar is visible. And her mother confirms she saw Gupta go into the operating room.
The photographs Shilu took of both girls tell powerful stories on their own. And give us insight into the conditions in which people are living in remote areas of post-earthquake Nepal.
The photos also highlight another question – how could Gupta, a renowned neurosurgeron, not know the difference, as CNN suggested, between tiny Salina and a 14-year-old who stands taller than her mother?
Once again, we had more questions than answers. Why would CNN delete references to a girl Gupta helped to save? Why say he performed surgery on Salina instead? Was it a mistake? Was it just for optics? Or did CNN have a more compelling reason for misleading viewers around the world?
CNN’s comments were limited. The organization claims Gupta may not have known who was on the operating table – and that if he was misinformed, that was the fault of the hospital.
But that doesn’t explain the correct first version. Or why, more than a week after learning Salina did not have surgery, CNN had not yet posted a correction or removed the videos in which Gupta claims to have saved Salina’s life.
We might never understand.
What we do know is that the culture of celebrity reporting and the discipline of foreign correspondence in today’s news media is deeply problematic. This story demonstrates that the world needs new models for international reporting. We believe trained local reporters is, at least, part of the solution.
Shilu pursued this story for one reason – to set the record straight for Salina.
We did not seek out this story. In truth, we believe its significance pales in comparison to the other topics we routinely cover.
Child labor in Congo.
Farmers poisoned by agrochemicals in the coffee plantations of Chiapas.
And from Nepal, the stories that need to be told post-earthquake are about education and development. Agriculture. A functioning government. Use of aid money. Health care. And so much more.
Every day, Global Press Journal reporters around the world, local women like Shilu, go places and talk to people unknown to foreign correspondents. There’s no fanfare when they show up: no driver, no interpreter, no security team. Often, that’s why local people are willing to speak with them and share the details of their stories. We place a high premium on accuracy. And we value the humanity and the dignity of every source. That will be our legacy.
We don’t know what the world’s reaction will be to this story. And in truth, it doesn’t matter. To us, this is not a story about a famous journalist or a giant media corporation. It’s not a story about yet another American journalist who plays fast and loose with the truth. For us, this has always been a story about Salina.
Cristi Hegranes is the founder and executive director of Global Press Institute and the publisher of Global Press Journal. Krista Kapralos is the managing editor of Global Press Journal.
Global Press Journal, 7 July 2015