Pamela Philipose

Pamela Philipose, presently the Ombudsperson of the New Delhi based news portal, The Wire.in, was until 2014 the director and editor-in-chief of Women’s Feature Service (WFS), a media agency mandated to highlight gender concerns in mainstream media coverage. She was also an advisor to the Media Task Force of the Government of India’s High Level Status of Women Committee Report over the years 2013-2014. She was awarded a senior fellowship by the Indian Council of Social Science Research between 2014 and 2016, during the course of which she also studied the impact of mediatisation on contemporary India. Earlier, as senior associate editor with the prominent Indian newspaper, The Indian Express, she anchored the edit page and wrote extensive commentary on a range of issues, including those of conflict, gender, development and the media. The Indian Express ran her satirical column, ‘Straight Face’, for ten years and she authored a book of political satire for Penguin India entitled Laugh All The Way To The Vote Bank. She was awarded the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Journalist in 1999 and the Zee-Astitva Award for Constructive Journalism in 2007. She has also co-edited two volumes, one focusing on reportage on conflict entitled ‘Across the Crossfire: Women and Conflict In India’ (Women Unlimited, 2012), and another that looked at women’s employment, ‘Work In Progress’, (Concept Information/ FES, 2013). Her book, ‘Media’s Shifting Terrain – Five years that Transformed the Way India Communicates’, published by Orient BlackSwan, came out in 2019.