Journalism
Manisha is the visual investigations lead and an Investigations Correspondent at the Guardian. She is an award-winning journalist & documentary film-maker specialising in using open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques to investigate human rights abuses under conditions of war. Her investigations have led the Guardian’s coverage on the Israel-Gaza war, the Pentagon leaks, disinformation mercenaries, transnational repression by Saudi Arabia and Iran, and more. View her work for the Guardian here.
Manisha was honoured in the Forbes Under 30 of media innovators in Europe in 2021, at age 25, the second youngest Forbes recipient in her category, for her impactful journalism. She is a judge for the International Emmy® Awards and a voting member of BAFTA. She was awarded the George Weidenfeld Special Prize 2020 for Courage, as part of the prestigious Axel Springer Awards for Young Journalists in Germany. The judges praised her ability to “courageously and resolutely track down dangerous truths, pinpoint grievances”, and added that her “modern open-source research sets standards”. She’s also won the Young Journalist Award in International Affairs for #30ToWatch under-30 two years in a row (2020 & 2021), by MHPC, from among 300 entries, and named as one of 100 Women Leaders in UK Technology.
Evidence uncovered in her investigations has been presented to/acted upon/cited by various international bodies, notably the UK Houses of Parliament, the U.K. Foreign Office, the EU, the Norwegian government, the US government, and at the United Nations Security Council.
She prides herself on combining traditional methods of investigative reporting with OSINT to document violations and civilian harm in conflict, and track down hard-to-find sources – people are always central to every investigation, whether they be victims or perpetrators of systemic abuses. Her background in filmmaking helps her construct compelling narratives for TV and digital audiences, and her primary areas of interest are war crimes and international humanitarian law violations, Middle Eastern politics, and the intersection of technology and human rights, especially surveillance regimes and drone wars.
Manisha at the screening of War Crimes for Likes (2019) at Regent Street Cinema, London
She formerly worked as producer for the BBC World Service’s Investigations team, was the senior OSINT analyst & investigative producer for the BBC World Service’s Emmy-winning Arabic Documentaries team, and has produced for BBC Newsnight, CNN International, the Telegraph, Bellingcat, and others.
At the BBC, she produced investigations that exposed the use of banned cluster munitions in Ukraine; war crimes by Russian planes in Syria; tracked down the foreign jet that bombed the migrant detention centre in Libya; revealed an online human trafficking network across the Gulf; investigated the disappearance of China’s most high-profile #MeToo activist, waterboarding of anti-war protestors in Moscow and the murder of Syria’s last female Kurdish politician; showed how an airline backed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard spread coronavirus across the Middle East; exposed foreign meddling by state powers in Libya’s war; and more.
Her films have been broadcast to more than 300 million people worldwide and are on Amazon Prime Video and BBC iPlayer; and her investigations have been covered by over 50 international outlets in the course of her career .
VIEW HER award-winning WORK HERE.
Manisha delivering the keynote at the International Journalism Forum in Greece, 2023.
At Newsnight, she delivered world exclusives on a number of international stories: from exposing the training of Jamal Khashoggi’s killer through leaked records, to investigating the background of the Christchurch shooter, and the fate of the women from the UK who joined ISIS; and has produced for star Newsnight presenters Emily Maitlis, Kirsty Wark, Gabriel Gatehouse, Marc Urban, and John Sweeney.
Manisha’s debut documentary, at age 23, “War Crimes for Likes”, exposed how war crimes committed in the Libyan civil war, such as the desecration of bodies, extrajudicial killings of civilians, and mutilation of bodies of POWs, were being shared on social media platforms like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter to incite violence. Her investigation directly identified the members of the Libyan National Army’s special forces committing these crimes and tracked down its survivors in exile. The film led the programme at BBC Newsnight, World TV, was most watched on the BBC English news website, featured on Radio 4 and CBS in America, and prompted a response from the UK Foreign Office saying they take “the allegations very seriously”. The story was nominated for Best Investigation 2019 by the Association of International Broadcasting.
Manisha holds a PhD in OSINT and the future of investigative journalism, from the University of Westminster. Read about her academic work here.