A wise person once said, “Facts without context are like individuals without society.” The newsroom’s job is to deliver the reader facts with the right context to the best of its ability. But what does a newsroom do when the facts they’re reporting are outside of their realm of understanding? How does a reporter from New York report on Indian elections? Well, they “parachute”. 

Parachute journalism is the practice of sending reporters into unfamiliar places to cover a breaking story without having deep local knowledge, language skills, or cultural context. Many Indian journalists recently parachuted to Nepal to cover the devastating floods that have already taken over a 1000 lives and over 5000 people still remain missing. The climate catastrophe has wiped out nearly 15 per cent of the country’s GDP in damages.