New Delhi: The Wire’s acclaimed five-part multimedia series titled “Breaking the Nets: An Oral History of India’s Fisherwomen” has bagged the prestigious 2025 One World Media Award in the Innovative Storytelling category.
According to the official announcement on social media platform Bluesky, the award was given in recognition of the series’ powerful portrayal of the “invisible labour of women in India’s fishing industry and their fight for rights through solidarity and action.”
Organised annually, the One World Media Awards honour outstanding media coverage from and about the Global South. These awards celebrate journalism that dismantles stereotypes, reshapes narratives, and bridges cultural divides.
Reported by Shamsheer Yousaf, Monica Jha, and Sriram Vittalamurthy, the series masterfully blends oral histories and immersive multimedia reportage to narrate inspiring stories of resilience from six Indian coastal and riverine regions — Sundarbans, Gulf of Mannar, Odisha, Puducherry, Mumbai, and Bihar.
More than just a collection of individual tales, the series documents the collective struggle of fisherwomen to secure rights, claim public space, and challenge entrenched patriarchal and caste-based hierarchies. It also critiques how government policies have consistently failed to officially recognise their contribution to the fishing economy.
“Breaking the Nets” has already been recognised with multiple accolades including the 2024 K.P. Narayana Kumar Memorial Award for Social Impact Journalism by the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), the Excellence in Online/Digital Journalism (Immersive Storytelling) award from the Asian American Journalists Association, and the New Media Writing Prize – 2024 FIPP Journalism Award. The series is also set to be archived by the British Library as a shortlisted landmark work.
