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I remember a time when journalism was different.
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It was a battle to find the truth, not a fight over what is the truth.
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It was a first draft of history, not a first draft of competing fictions.
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It was cold, rational reporting, not heated partisan polemic.
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Indian journalism has always been mediocre, but there was a time when the intent, at least,
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was to get at the facts, not to push specific narratives, from facts to narratives, from
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asking measured questions to shouting, shouting, shouting, from being a corrective to politics
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to becoming a tool of politics.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics, and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Barma.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
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I'm a 70s kid, like my guest on today's show, Nidhi Rajsaan.
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When we grew up in the 80s and 90s, there was a broad consensus on what the facts were.
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And while everyone distrusted politics, we more or less trusted the media.
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It might often have been inept, mostly mediocre, but it was well intentioned.
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All that has now changed.
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Our media is a mess, especially news television, but not only news television.
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I have watched this as an alarmed observer on the sidelines, writing columns and pontificating
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from a distance, but never really in the thick of the battlefield.
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Nidhi has been in the middle of the action, though, helping us to figure out a changing
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India since she first joined NDTV in 1999.
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NDTV, the training ground for so many prominent journalists, once looked like it would set
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the benchmark for good reporting.
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Now it looks like an outlier in these shrill, polarized times.
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Nidhi, for these 21 years, has embodied that cliché about how journalists must comfort
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the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
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But the comfortable are not comfortable with being afflicted, and independent journalism
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in India is being attacked in so many different ways.
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Nidhi is now headed to Harvard to teach journalism there, and I managed to catch her in the transition
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to share her insights on the seen and the unseen.
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Before we get to the conversation, though, let's take a quick commercial break.
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In the last few months, I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours watching TikTok.
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You might consider it an addiction, and indeed, TikTok always gets my dopamine going.
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I don't call this addiction, though.
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I call it sociological research, or even taking one for the team.
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I have designed a new course called TikTok and Indian Society, and I invite you to be
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I believe that TikTok reflects a real India better than any other outlet for news and
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Our mainstream sources of news and entertainment are controlled by elites who just don't get
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small town India, or village India, or poor India, or even young aspirational India.
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Because TikTok has blown away these barriers, and given the means of production to everyone,
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it has empowered people who otherwise did not have a voice or a platform, and I am blown
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away by the talent I see every day on this app.
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And my eyes are also opened to so many shades and nuances of India that I had not noticed
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We see the worst of India in our prejudices and attitudes, but also the best in our creativity
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My course is unique, as it will be conducted, surprise surprise, on WhatsApp, and will involve
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both my thoughts on the many themes I discuss, as well as hundreds of amazing videos that
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I am charging rupees 5000 for this course.
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Do head on over to sceneunseen.in slash tiktok to enroll for TikTok and Indian Society.
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My new course over at sceneunseen.in slash tiktok.
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Nidhi, welcome to the scene in the unseen.
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Thanks so much for having me, Amit.
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Nidhi, before we get to sort of talking about journalism and your career in journalism,
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tell me a bit about sort of your life before that, like your dad, of course, was Maharaj
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Christian Razan, who used to be editor in chief of PTI, noted journalist, you know,
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you grew up across the world in London and in New York.
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And I read somewhere that you wanted to be a doctor when you were a kid, not a journalist.
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So you know, tell me a bit about that.
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What were your sort of formative influences like and why did you decide to turn to journalism?
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So yeah, that doctor thing is funny, because, well, first, like all children, I wanted to
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And that pretty much died by the time I turned 12, because I realized I didn't like flying
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So outer space was really out of my league.
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And then, yeah, I kind of got interested in medicine and I took up science.
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We had moved back to India and I took up science as my stream of study in classes 11 and 12.
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And I remember my dad coming to me and saying, why do you want to spend so many years of
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your life studying, do something creative?
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And you know, my mother was shocked.
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She's like, how can you tell your daughter who wants to take up this noble profession,
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like a good Kashmiri girl, you know, she wants to be a doctor.
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And you know, he said it because, you know, when he was in school and college, he never
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wanted to be a doctor or an engineer, which was the only thing that Kashmiri parents wanted
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And I think he was very keen that I do something creative.
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And then around that time, when I actually joined college, which was LSR, television
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started to become big, you know, NDTV was, I mean, there was the world this week and
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NDTV had come on to star news.
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And so TV was becoming more and more interesting.
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And my mother said that, would you ever be interested in this?
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And I realized that actually I would, because I guess without realizing it, we grew up in
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a household where news was just part of life, like brushing your teeth.
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You know, you get up in the morning, read the newspaper, you have to watch the evening
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And so I always enjoyed keeping up with current affairs.
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But I didn't want to follow my dad's footsteps and become a print journalist, because I thought
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there would be too many comparisons.
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So I was reluctant at first, but when I realized that there was another medium by which to
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do journalism, which would be something I could claim as my own, that is why, you know,
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And that's how it happened.
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And what was sort of your formative influences there?
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Like, I mean, there's two senses.
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One of course is in the narrow sense of after you want to be a journalist, who are you looking
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at as role models and where are you sort of imbibing those values from?
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But also in a broader sense, you know, intellectually, what were your influences?
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You know, what were the books you remember from that time, which maybe shaped the way
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you thought about the world and so on?
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Well, I think obviously my dad was a big influence in terms of just journalistic ideals and values.
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And he's always been someone who's really been an ideal journalist in that way and someone
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I've really looked up to.
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But I remember as a kid growing up in the US, reading about Watergate, and, you know,
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looking at journalists, broadcasters like Sam Donaldson, you know, there was that famous,
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you know, hold on, Mr. President, he even wrote a book by that title.
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And, you know, that really stuck with me as a kid that, you know, a reporter can, you
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know, stop the leader of the free world and say, you know, hold on, you have to answer
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You know, and that's how powerful journalism is and how it should be.
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Unfortunately, nobody does that here, and nobody would.
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But these were some of the things that really influenced me growing up watching broadcasters
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like Sam Donaldson, like Tom Brokaw, and seeing the kind of journalism that they did.
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And it's so different to what we see on TV, on Indian TV today, certainly.
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And of course, seeing it in my own home.
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And how much of a difference did it make, you know, relative to your colleagues, for
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example, the fact that, you know, you spent time in London and New York growing up, that,
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you know, your father, of course, was a journalist and you were exposed to perhaps much more
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than many of your colleagues might have been like, you know, I remember when I was like,
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I'm also a 70s kid like you, and when I was growing up in the 80s and the 90s, print journalism
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was considered sort of a last resort, you fail to do your medical and your engineering
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and blah, blah, blah, and print journalism was in the last resort.
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And you know, at all my time in journalism, I've sort of bemoaned the poor editorial standards
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and writing standards and all of that.
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TV was different because TV was new, it appeared like there was a brand new generation coming
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And within that, you were someone who had, you know, perhaps a little more, a slightly
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different experience while growing up in terms of exposure to media and culture and so on.
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Did that make much of a difference per se?
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And within television, did you feel that, you know, you were a lot apart from the older
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school, the print journalists?
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You know, the thing is that I think the kind of childhood I had was very privileged and
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I was really lucky that I had it for both me and my brother.
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It was, as you rightly said, it just exposes you to a completely different world.
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I was four plus when we moved to England.
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And so I did my initial sort of nursery schooling here.
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And you know, my whole worldview of things, I think for all of us, our early childhood
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and those formative years are really important in terms of how we, our values are shaped,
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how we look at the world, and perhaps the most important.
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So especially in the US, because by the time I was in New York, you know, I was in a class
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of people where everybody was, everyone was basically an immigrant.
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You know, I grew up in a vibrant city where, you know, my best friend was an African American
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and other close friend of mine, who's still my closest friend today, half Bangladeshi,
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half German, a very sort of eclectic, you know, childhood in that sense, in terms of
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the people you interacted with grew up with.
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So I've had a very liberal outlook towards life, towards everything as a result of that.
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So that really shaped me.
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And schooling there was very, very different.
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And coming back to India was actually very hard, Amit, because, you know, the school
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system here was different, the emphasis on rote learning, etc.
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That wasn't something that I was used to, though I did pretty well as a student here
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Also the language, because, you know, I'm a Kashmiri, so in my house, we grew up speaking
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Kashmiri always, and we grew up speaking English, obviously, but Hindi is not our mother tongue
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So Hindi for me was, you know, Amitabh Bachchan films and, you know, stuff like his dialogues
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in Hindi movies, which I really enjoyed.
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But I wasn't fluent at all in Hindi.
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And so when I came back, I was 13.
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And it was really hard, but, you know, getting rid of my American accent so that I could
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fit in with people to fit in with my classmates, because you really feel like an outsider.
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I didn't know what Antakshari was, because that was like, those were the nice days, you
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know, when kids actually played Antakshari and stuff like that, when they were like 14.
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So you know, like, I didn't know all those Hindi songs, I watched Hindi movies, but because
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I wasn't comfortable with the language, but I'm proud of the fact that when I did decide
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to take that plunge into TV and all of that, you know, when I was in college, and I would
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read the Navbhara Times every Sunday, out loud with a Hindi English dictionary next
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to me, because I knew that if I have to be a broadcaster, if I have to be a journalist
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period in this country, I have to know Hindi.
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And I have to know it well enough to be able to communicate on air.
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And I anchored, I have been a bilingual anchor and reporter all these years, I anchored on
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our Hindi channel for many years, I've anchored the US elections with Pankaj Pachori in Hindi,
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with Vikram Chandra in Hindi, I've anchored the budget in Hindi.
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And I'm really, really proud that I was able to do that.
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Because it wasn't easy, it wasn't the language that sort of came naturally.
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And you know, they often say of cricketers when they play a beautiful shot that, oh,
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he makes it look so easy.
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And I think one can have the sort of the same impression about news anchors not realizing
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that sort of hard work that goes in behind the scenes.
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I'm just thinking aloud, I was, you know, when you mentioned how your cosmopolitan background
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and, you know, being in a school in New York that had, I mean, which is basically a city
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of immigrants, shaped your outlook to the world.
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And just thinking aloud, I'm therefore wondering that how true would you say from all your
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experiences of meeting people throughout the last 20 something years, which is such a core
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part of your job, how true is it?
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Would you say that people are often shaped by their circumstances, that their ideology
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can come out of what they have been exposed to and are there, for example, the other thought
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that sort of strikes me is that despite the Kashmiri Pandit background, you don't sort
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of have the resentments that many Kashmiri Pandits do for, you know, understandable reasons
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What are your thoughts on this?
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Well, I agree with that.
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I do think the circumstances we are exposed to shape who we are.
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And for instance, on the Kashmiri Pandit question, I'll tell you something.
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I mean, I think it's because, you know, it's not that my family wasn't affected by it.
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It was my grandparents had to leave with their bags packed overnight and flee.
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And my father and my mother would always tell my brother and me that, look, we shouldn't
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blame entire communities for what happened.
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My father still has a very romantic notion of how he grew up in Kashmir.
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And he truly believes, I know a lot of Kashmiri Pandits don't and they get angry when some
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of us say this, but he truly believes in that idea of Kashmiriyat, that his best friends
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growing up were Muslims.
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And whenever we would visit Kashmir every year, we would always go to Khil Bhawani,
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which is our most revered temple there.
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But on the way back, we would also go to Hazrat Bal Masjid, to the shrine and offer prayers
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And my parents would always say, my dad in particular, that, you know, this is who we
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This is how we must respect all religions.
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And that, yes, a lot of things happened during the Pandit Exodus, which have made people
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angry and bitter for understandable reasons, but that, you know, the Muslim community has
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also suffered, that we cannot tarnish an entire community, etc.
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So I've grown up with those values.
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And I guess I don't blame those from my community who have actually borne the brunt of that
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Exodus and the kind of atrocities that happened with them and their families.
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Obviously, you know, they are shaped by that anger.
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They are shaped by that very deep and real pain that they went through.
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So I don't think that I can sit in judgment on, you know, how they feel.
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But at the same time, I'm proud of the fact that I do meet many of those.
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They may not be vocal on Twitter like some others, but I do meet many Kashmiri Pandits
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also, who, despite having gone through what they have, are, you know, sort of willing
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to heal and heal together.
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And I would hope that that sentiment would eventually prevail.
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I was going to ask a question about this towards the end of the show.
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But as we brought up Kashmir, I'll ask it now.
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I just want to quote from the introduction you wrote for your book, Left, Right or Center,
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where you spoke about how when you went to Srinagar to shoot your documentary there and
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you've written, quote, When I reached Srinagar, many people already recognized me from television.
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They knew I was a Kashmiri Pandit.
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At first I was wary, my mother's fears ringing in my head, but very soon that fear dissipated.
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I was welcomed warmly like a long lost daughter who had finally come home.
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And with that, my faith in the idea of Kashmiriyat and the idea of India was restored.
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And elsewhere in the introduction, you talk about how Gurme Har Kaur, who lost her father
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in combat at Kargil in 99, once when she was chatting with her mom about it, her mom said
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that listen, Pakistan didn't kill him, war did.
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And you know, there's also the story about Yogendra Yadav, who after what his family had
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suffered during partition was named Saleem, you know, that was his middle name, which
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is again such a beautiful sentiment.
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And it seems to me, and you know, I've also traveled through Pakistan covering cricket
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And it seems to me that, you know, despite all the harsh, shrill, angry rhetoric that
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is there in the airwaves and so on, when you actually go down to the level of the common
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person, these tribal distinctions don't seem to matter so much.
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There's another strand that kind of plays out.
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Why do you think it is then that when it comes to the media or it's the ugliness that gets
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accentuated and exacerbated?
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I think that's just the nature of the medium, Amit.
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And the fact is that social media in particular is a medium in which ugliness gets amplified
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to infinity, you know, and it brings out, I think, the worst in people.
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It also brings out a lot of good in people.
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I'm not saying that, but, you know, honestly, I remember, I mean, I'm in that generation
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like you, you know, we had life without social media and it was so much simpler when you
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It's so much nicer and now look how complicated and mentally exhausting it is.
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And I just think that that just brings out the worst in all of us.
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I mean, like when you actually talk to people on the ground, the sentiments will be very
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different from what the establishment, you know, will actually do.
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Pakistan is a prime example of that.
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I have friends who are Pakistanis, very good people, and who are brave enough to take on
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the ISI and their own army very publicly, journalists in particular.
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In fact, I think their media is far more free, frankly, and brave than ours.
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But, you know, even in Kashmir, my own experiences have been like that.
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But, you know, I mean, social media tends to reduce everything to these dangerous binaries
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which in itself is another conversation.
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Yeah, and we'll come to that a little later.
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Let's go to your early days in television in the 90s, which is, of course, before social
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media and, you know, sort of as a viewer watching the evolution of television.
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I remember it from the early days when Pranav Roy did The World This Week, which was, you
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know, this one hour weekly thing we all used to look forward to on the only channel we
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And then, you know, I remember the video news magazine, Newstrak used to come out and there
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was such a leisurely pace to everything.
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And you've also spoken about how when you first joined news television, people had so
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much more time to do their stories.
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You had a couple of days or, you know, longer to put a single story together.
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You know, tell me a bit about what those early days were like.
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Like, you know, you obviously joined any TV as a bright-eyed 21-year-old.
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What did you find was different?
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What did you learn in those early years before things started changing in the 2000s?
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You know, it was so different.
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I joined in 1999 and those were like the golden days of television.
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And I've seen, I've seen the whole transition from that into what has happened now, which
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is both sad and, you know, strange.
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But the early days were incredible because there was a lot of idealism.
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There was not that kind of cutthroat competition from other news channels.
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And honestly, NDTV was, and in my view, continues to be the best television news organization.
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I mean, there is no, I mean, it's not a coincidence that all the major sort of players on the
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television news broadcasting stage in India today have their origins in NDTV.
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Some good and some not so good.
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And you know who I mean.
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But you know, the basic training, they all came from the NDTV stable by and large, you
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So it was incredible because this was an organization at that time that was, you know, we had money,
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we had resources, we had the platform.
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You know, you could spend days traveling for a story.
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Like I said earlier, as you pointed out, you would spend time on that story.
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There was a whole series we used to do for many years actually called India Matters,
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where all of us would take turns every month for one week in a month, we'd be assigned
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to India Matters, where we traveled into rural India and sort of uncovering India invisible,
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going beyond the regular politics, the day to day stuff that happened in Delhi.
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And you know, you had the budgets for that, you know.
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I remember when I joined, I spent just two, three weeks in orientation, which was great.
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I mean, you know, you're actually being taught now, there is no time for this orientation.
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Our new reporters who come, come, they train for a few days and bam, you know, you're out
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in the field because there's no time.
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But those were different days, you know, you were leisurely taught about how editing is
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done, camera work is done, etc.
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And you know, I walked into Tranoi's room one day and I said, Can I go to Tibet?
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I want to do a documentary there and Tranoi was like, Yeah, of course you should apply
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And I got a visa like a year later and I went.
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So you know, I can't do that now.
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Nobody can because there ain't no money for that kind of stuff now.
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But you know, I one day I went in, you know, I said, I'd like to go to Iran and if I get
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an interview with the foreign minister, can I stay back for a week and do a documentary?
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And, you know, shot there for like seven, eight days.
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That was an adventure, you know, came back, put it on air.
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So I think I mean, those were really the golden days, like I said, and that's of course linked
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to the financial health of an organization, among other things.
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And over time, you know, things for the media as a whole have become much more difficult.
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And we know, we know that.
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And we'll discuss sort of the transitional points.
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But I have a newbie question, which is that even then, you know, NDTV was of course a
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So what gave you guys, you know, the luxury to sort of take so much time and do so much
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thoughtful work and do the sort of stuff that you did with, you know, Uncovering India and
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Did you have more people?
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Was it just more budgets?
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Was the news structured differently?
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It was structured differently also, Amit, because you didn't have bulletins like every
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You know, you had them.
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I remember alternate hours and then the flagship bulletin was your nine o'clock.
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So you could actually spare a bunch of reporters to be doing something completely different.
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Somebody on an investigation for Star News Sunday, which was like, you know, your long
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format magazine show on Sundays.
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You had people you could spare for India Matters, which was a completely different team altogether.
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So it's all those things together, which made it possible to.
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And because you didn't have that sort of some other channel breathing down your neck and
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those kind of rivalries, you could actually, I mean, I spent three days doing a rainwater
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harvesting story, for God's sake, I was damned loud off, you know.
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But that was a new thing then, you know, and I was like, you know, I showcased what rainwater
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I think one of my I think the first story I did a P2C for, if I'm not mistaken, was
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about condom vending machines in government offices, which is super awkward to shoot because
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I had to interview, but I spent two days on that, I didn't have to like, I didn't have
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to rush into it and do it in two hours, you know.
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So I mean, like nowadays, there's no question, I mean, I would tell a reporter, what do you
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need some bites and, you know, some shots and so none of that then, you know, there
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was a very nice feature on Jon Stewart in the New York Times.
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And I'll quote from something he said with Struck God, where he said, quote, 24 hour
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news networks are built for one thing, and that's 9 11, there are very few events that
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would justify being covered 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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So in the absence of urgency, they have to create it.
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You create urgency through conflict, stop quote.
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And you know, as this sort of process started playing out, how did it affect you?
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Was it sort of frustrating because then the pressure on the channel becomes to amplify
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every damn little thing that you cover, which means that, you know, one, everything is shallow
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because you're spending less time on it.
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And two, you can't go deep into, you know, areas which may not be of interest to mass
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viewers like rainwater harvesting, I presume.
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How was that process like in coming to terms with it?
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I completely agree with what Jon Stewart has said there.
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And that is part of the problem that well, the two things in India, frankly, unfortunately,
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for whatever reason, you don't even have to manufacture urgent news because there's always
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But the fact is, on a serious note, that even the most sort of anodyne news items which
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can just pass off as a graphic or we put on the ticker, increasingly, I found in the last
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few years in particular, there is a thing about many, but we need an OB on this right
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It's not that big a story, but because the other channel is doing it, we need to like
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stay with this for like 10 minutes and play it up and, you know, get reactions from X,
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And sometimes you don't even get a chance to process, you know, what it is that you
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You know, like one day I was suddenly asked to anchor on an RBI press conference.
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And I actually I said no, because I said, I am not an expert on the RBI.
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And let's not pretend that anchors know everything.
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My expertise is in politics and foreign policy.
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You want me to, you know, come on and do something on that.
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I'd be happy to, because that's what I've done my entire life.
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But I'm not suddenly going to be an expert on the repo rate, which frankly, I need to
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read about and understand.
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I'm not going to pretend I know anything about it.
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So we're in that age, Amit, right now, where everything is like is big, you know.
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And for me personally, that is part of the reason why I became extremely tired of it.
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You know, in the last few years, while I love television and I've actually walked away from
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television from the best prime time slot that one could have, I mean, you know, some people
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say that, I mean, what else do you want?
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Great executive editor, nine o'clock slot.
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It's not that it's just that the nature of the medium now just doesn't let you breathe
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You know, and you're just it's just constant there is, I mean, your brain just doesn't
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And television has just become like this competitive thing to put your senior anchors on air for
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Every small thing is now a big thing.
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So I think that's something we all need to reflect on.
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But that's the way it is now with so many news channels out there.
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And I once did an episode with Ashok Malik where he gave me an interesting insight onto
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this race to the bottom, where he said that, you know, when you have channels paying such
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enormous license fees to just get into the business, you know, the pressure to recoup
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So they have no choice but to sort of chase TRPs in this sort of frenetic race.
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And then everybody gets caught up in that and there's no getting out.
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You know, do you think structural reasons are like that are part of the problem that
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because entry barriers are so high, once you get in, you cannot really chase a niche and,
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you know, do whatever you, you know, do rainwater harvesting stories, for example?
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I mean, it did work for us.
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It's not I mean, NDTV is India's most trusted news brand repeatedly for a reason.
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So I think it's not that it didn't work.
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And look, these bark TRPs, frankly, are TRPs that NDTV has challenged all the time.
#
They don't make any sense if you if you look at how our shows do on YouTube, for instance,
#
or even Tata Sky, the numbers are completely different from what bark puts out.
#
So there's so much I mean, NDTV has gone public with this about the kind of manipulation
#
that happens, you know, with ratings.
#
So I do think that at least there used to be a space for this.
#
And I'd like to believe that there is, you know, still space for it, although sometimes
#
one gets so disheartened that even during something like this coronavirus pandemic,
#
when TV viewership has jumped immensely across the board because people were in lockdown,
#
they were at home, people wanted information.
#
If your bark ratings are still reflecting that Republican times now are your leading
#
news channels, then I begin to wonder the choices that people are making, you know,
#
and is this what they wanted to see?
#
Because those channels were not giving you information.
#
They were still doing Tablighi Jamaat 24 hours a day.
#
And is that what people want to see?
#
So I said, you know, a lot of these numbers don't make sense to me just because of how
#
they just don't add up.
#
You know, they actually don't add up if you just look at online and how we're doing online
#
and how we're doing on bark.
#
So I don't know, I still think there is space for this kind of good journalism.
#
And that's why NDTV will not become tabloid.
#
It is not going to be tabloid.
#
It's not been easy for us.
#
But NDTV would never take the sort of times now route, we're just genetically completely
#
And one of the shifts I've noticed over the past two decades exacerbated by social media,
#
but you know, it began even before that was that, you know, when we were growing up in
#
the 80s and 90s, there was a broad consensus on the truth.
#
There wasn't a dispute about what is actually happening.
#
You know, your different media outlets may chase different angles or have different opinions
#
But you know, everyone kind of agreed on what the facts were.
#
What has now happened is one that people get their information from many more sources.
#
Media itself is so fragmented.
#
And you know, there is no longer that consensus on the truth.
#
People have their ideologies or their visions of the world and whatever and they just want
#
information that sort of confirms that and we all get sucked into these echo chambers,
#
which gets shriller and shriller as you know, you compete to sort of express your own virtue
#
within your selected echo chamber.
#
And it seems to me that, you know, then you begin to wonder what is this news thing?
#
Is it just a battle of competing narratives that do facts even matter anymore?
#
And you know, barring, you know, small islands of excellence like NDTV and a handful of online
#
independent sites, not the mainstream media.
#
It seems to me that everything else is about, you know, this pitch battle of narratives.
#
How does that sort of make you feel?
#
I mean, I understand that NDTV has had its core values and stuck to them throughout,
#
but more and more in these times, it seems like an outlier.
#
And I completely agree with you because now it's become like the media has become ideologically
#
divided in this country, the way pretty much everything else has.
#
And that's to me has taken, I mean, what I see, frankly, is a decay of an important institution
#
in a democracy, which is a free press.
#
And I see that not just in isolation, Amit.
#
I see it as a larger decay of democratic institutions in the country as a whole, whether it is parliament.
#
I mean, how much work are parliament committees doing, for example?
#
How much look at the way bills are rammed through parliament without any proper debate
#
and discussion, you know, even the finance bill.
#
So you may have a big majority in parliament and you may have an overwhelming majority,
#
but democracy is not about just the majority.
#
It's about taking everyone along.
#
So look at the way parliament has been diminished.
#
Look at the way the judiciary has abdicated its responsibility with the honorable exceptions,
#
I may say, of some high courts, which to my surprise in the last few months have woken
#
up, for instance, to the migrant crisis in a way that should really sort of wake up the
#
Supreme Court of India, which waded into it much later.
#
But if you look at the Supreme Court of India, which has sort of turned the other way on
#
human rights issues, constitutional issues on habeas corpus, it's changed the meaning
#
of that, particularly when it comes to Kashmir.
#
So when you see what is happening to us as a democracy right now, I feel that the decay
#
of the media and the decline of the media as an institution in India has to be seen
#
I think in India, a big crisis also stares at us because of the way I mean, you raised
#
this question earlier about the structures and being dependent on certain parameters
#
to, for instance, make money and TRPs.
#
That's part of the problem that your media is actually dependent on the government for
#
advertisements to survive.
#
And that whole model and that whole system is utterly flawed.
#
We have a media that does not stand together and is not institutionally strong enough to
#
fight back from government pressure or government intimidation.
#
I mean, you'll have the odd statement from an editor's guild, but please tell me what
#
is the press council of India?
#
When has it ever done anything meaningful?
#
Does anybody listen to the press council of India?
#
You know, so that to me is the saddest thing, actually, just seeing the sort of decay.
#
I mean, you look at America, you see that in America also mainstream media is constantly
#
The president hates them, he abuses them, but he cannot ignore them.
#
He still gives interviews, he still does press conferences.
#
He still went to the New York Times editorial board and did an interview with them despite
#
all the names he calls the New York Times, right?
#
So institutionally, the media there is much stronger and so they can call their president
#
a liar and not worry about repercussions.
#
And here we are the complete opposite.
#
We have become ideologically divided.
#
The truth is a casualty, I'm sorry, but some of these news channels to me are not news
#
I don't know what to categorize them as.
#
I used to laugh at them, Amit, at one point of time.
#
I used to think it was funny that you had these 10 windows and you had the anchor screaming
#
like a banjo about something.
#
But I don't think it's funny anymore.
#
And I realized in the last couple of years in particular, that what they're doing is
#
they're putting targets on people's backs.
#
You know, they're demonizing entire communities, they demonize Kashmiris all the time.
#
They like, they want to paint all Kashmiri Muslims as pro-Pakistani terrorists, which
#
They will question the credentials.
#
They have equated anyone who criticizes the government as that, as being anti-national
#
or unpatriotic, you know, the government is not the nation, right?
#
So they whip up that hysteria, they whip up and they're doing it now.
#
I mean, even with China, it's embarrassing when you look at the screen grabs of, you
#
know, last 10 days ago that they said stuff like Nepal kneels and China bows.
#
And do you know how badly those kinds of headlines and captions play out in those countries?
#
People are very, very sensitive to that.
#
You know, Nepalese friends have called and said how angry and sort of hurt they are seeing
#
those kinds of captions.
#
Look what Nepal did to you, you know, and China bows and, you know, stuff like that.
#
I mean, I think they're doing far, far more harm than we realize to our social fabric,
#
not just to journalism, but to society.
#
And I think it's really, it's just dangerous now.
#
It's not funny anymore.
#
You know, since you mentioned Nepal, this anecdote came to mind about this pitched battle
#
that took place, I think in the late thirties or 1940s, when people were discussing what
#
shape an independent India could take, which was then in the future, of course, and Mahatma
#
Gandhi said something to the effect of the Nizam of Hyderabad could be the new ruler
#
at which Weer Savarkar took offense and said, no, we must be a Hindu kingdom.
#
The king of Nepal should be the king of India and contrast that with where we are.
#
You know, I'm just thinking of the sort of contrast that you've seen, like in one of
#
your interviews, you quoted your dad as telling you, quote, don't editorialize and get all
#
Check with more than one source.
#
And in contrast, when I was reading your introduction to Left, Right and Center, I'll quote what
#
you said, quote, it is now anti-national to even question the government.
#
So most TV channels today simply don't do it.
#
In an interview to NDTV, Arun Shourie called them North Korean TV channels that essentially
#
parrot the government line, the raids on NDTV in June marked a turning point for free press
#
As Shourie said, it was meant to kill the chicken to frighten the monkeys, quoting a
#
Chinese proverb, stop quote.
#
But just looking at how the media is structured in India, this seems so inevitable to me.
#
For example, as you point out, the government has so many levers with which it can pressurize
#
In the sense, just looking at the print media, you look at HD or TOI, they have so many other
#
business interests, somebody will have a chemical factory somewhere, there can be an IT raid
#
Similarly, so much of media runs basically on money coerced from us.
#
It runs on government advertisements and the government uses that to basically buy the
#
media and use it as a lever to pressurize the media.
#
And similarly, you also, besides the carrot, you also see the stick where cases of sedition
#
are filed on journalists and there is a sort of a chilling effect in play as well.
#
You know, NDTV itself, of course, has taken a lot of pressure.
#
There was a campaign to get advertisers to quit NDTV and you know, there have been income
#
tax rates and all of that, you know.
#
So just looking at this, I mean, do you think this and the only sites that really survive
#
are small online sites, which are not dependent on all of this, like, you know, the very brave
#
people at Alt News and The Wire and Scroll and so on.
#
But beyond that, you know, do you think and but they are just below the radar mostly.
#
But you know, is that sort of one of the reasons that you're kind of glad to be getting?
#
I mean, are you glad to be just getting out of this?
#
Are you thinking to yourself right now?
#
Not my circus, not my monkey.
#
I've had enough of this shit.
#
You know, partly, yes, to be honest, Amit.
#
But the thing is that I live and breathe news.
#
I mean, it's the only thing I know how to do well.
#
I've been a reporter, I've edited everything.
#
And so like for me, this is a passion, which is why it makes me so angry to see what has
#
happened to the media in the last few years.
#
And and you know, it also just happened to be the right opportunity.
#
I mean, it's that, you know, this Harvard thing, you know, it came along and I thought
#
to myself, I mean, I told them, I said that, are you sure you're interested?
#
I mean, because I've never taught before and I'm not I mean, it's very different to sort
#
of talk to a room full of people as a one off and take questions.
#
And they were like, no, we're looking for people who don't come, you know, with that baggage
#
of teaching and would rather be able to teach through their own experiences and so on.
#
So I thought to myself that, you know, this is a great opportunity for me to actually
#
take a step back from the madness of this place and to learn.
#
For me, this is an opportunity to be a student all over again, because I think I will be
#
It's not that I will be the teacher.
#
This gives me an opportunity also to just learn to be in a very different atmosphere
#
where I learn from the students I interact with and from the faculty there, I can go
#
And I'm not relocating, Amit, by the way, it's a visiting role.
#
I'll be back and forth between Delhi and Boston.
#
So for me, it's the best of both worlds.
#
And maybe I'll start working on a book on the media or something, you know, while I
#
spend time here in India.
#
But it's nice to be, you know, for 21 years, this is all I've done all the time.
#
Like it's 24-7, it's been TV, earthquake ho gaya tum jao, plane crash ho gaya tum jao,
#
bombing ho gaya jao, you know, go to the spot.
#
And of course, in the last few years, it was every time something happened, go and anchor
#
So, you know, now it's nice to take a step back.
#
And it still connects me to journalism.
#
So it doesn't take me away from what I love.
#
But it hopefully will give me a different perspective and let me give something back
#
to it because I'm still very idealistic about it for some reason.
#
Yeah, I mean, I don't get to speak to too many idealistic people and I'm really glad
#
you're getting a break after all these years taking a grind and our listeners will also
#
now get a break but we'll be back because we have a lot to discuss.
#
If you enjoy listening to The Scene and the Unseen, you can play a part in keeping the
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The Scene and the Unseen has been a labor of love for me.
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I've enjoyed putting together many stimulating conversations, expanding my brain and my universe
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Welcome back to The Scene and the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Nidhi Rasan and Nidhi, so far we've sort of been talking about how television
#
has changed over the, you know, the 21 years that you've been in it.
#
But what has also changed is not just television itself, but the whole media landscape surrounding
#
it and social media is a significant part of that and you know, you and I were just
#
being nostalgic a little while back about how peaceful and nice the days were before
#
Tell me a little bit about the kind of difference that, you know, social media has made to the
#
way people cover news and to people like you personally who cover the news.
#
Well, it's made a huge difference.
#
Look, the fact is that I think social media is great in that it's a great source of immediate
#
As a journalist, when you follow, let's say, the AP Twitter handle Reuters or any news
#
organizations Twitter handle, you know that you're getting immediate updates, you know,
#
in the old days, you wouldn't get it so quickly, you would have to wait for the flash to come
#
up on the news buyers on PTI or AP or Reuters, et cetera, on, you know, which was connected
#
to your office systems.
#
So social media has a certain immediacy to it, reporters directly tweet from a briefing
#
about what is happening, you know, word by word, what is being said, statements that
#
So it's very quick and that way it's a great source of information.
#
But I mean, what it's also done is I think it's made news much more interactive, which
#
is both great and also a pain.
#
But on a serious note, I think it's good.
#
It's good that a lot of your viewers can tell you what they really think, let's say of your
#
show or of a particular story, they give you feedback.
#
Very often people flag important stories, like for instance, in this pandemic, people
#
have taken to Twitter to tell us about the way that, you know, hospitals had no beds,
#
you know, and if they hadn't done that, you know, it would have taken much longer to get
#
to know about how serious the crisis is, for example, in Delhi, you know, about the shortage
#
So I think in that way, social media has played a great role.
#
And I mean, the abuse aside, I'm saying that when there is a heavy conversation between
#
you and someone who reads your work or watches your work, then that's great.
#
But yes, it's made reporting much more complicated.
#
I'll tell you, for example, when I went to cover Mr. Modi's visit to Israel a few years
#
ago, I think it was three years ago, firstly, you know, cost cutting.
#
So I was covering it with the mobile journalism kit, you know, the Mojo, just the cell phone
#
and me went to Israel, and everyone else was there, you know, with their big cameras and
#
But I had, I was really proud of the fact that we were doing it like this.
#
And kind of, you know, I stood there doing my piece to camera.
#
So first, you have to worry about the technical part of it, where, you know, frankly, I was,
#
I was so distracted about the reporting part of it, that I was so worried that the mic
#
The tripod shouldn't fall apart, you know, you know, stuff like that, because you worry
#
so much about the technical part of it, because you're doing everything yourself.
#
And then I almost the ambassador almost got run over by a truck because we were standing
#
in the middle of the road doing an interview, you know, that so I'm like, you know, I'm
#
pulling him into the frame, and then Saasini Haider was on that trip with me.
#
So she helped, you know, then, because the entire TV media went after baby Moshe, who's
#
So you know, I need to hold the phone for me while I chased his family down and said,
#
would you would you speak to us and you know, at least she was there to help so it wasn't
#
But then, on that trip, I realized we just started doing, you know, Facebook live also,
#
which I didn't know what the hell that was, until it happened.
#
Because now I'm going and doing these stories about the Indian community in Israel and whatever.
#
And so in addition to doing my television story, I had to first put out a web copy.
#
Now everything is on the web first.
#
And then I have to do a Facebook live.
#
Okay, so I was like, yeah, and then I had to do that also.
#
And then you have to do your television, obese also, you know, and then deal with the technology
#
and the technical issues and failures and all of that.
#
So it's not easy. And that's what reporting is like on a day to day basis for a lot of
#
You know, you are doing digital, you are handling your social media accounts, a lot of them
#
are having to do YouTube stuff separately.
#
And then you have the pressures from television.
#
So and plus you have to make sure you're actually getting your story right.
#
So there's a lot of pressure on reporters today.
#
And I have to say very honestly, it was much more fun way back then.
#
You know, I personally think so, that it was much more fun when one had the time and the
#
space to be able to think about what one had to write and do.
#
I still love the rush of hard news, but just sometimes it's just overwhelming.
#
And I hats off to these kids, you know, who sort of manage everything so seemingly effortlessly,
#
but it really, really is not easy.
#
Because you know, even the physical demands of the job, as you know, are very real.
#
I mean, look at these reporters who've been out or reporting on the migrant crisis or
#
just the state of or of the pandemic in general.
#
And then you juggle all these things together, social media included.
#
And you know, now, you know, when you do it, you don't just anchor a show, then you have
#
to identify clips to put out on social media by what will catch the audience's eye.
#
You know, what are the things that you can sort of extract and make a headline so that
#
it gets viral on Twitter becomes viral on Twitter, because now that is also important.
#
So one good thing I'm reading about NDTV in particular is that we don't do the whole
#
hashtag thing, except on election day, which is elections with NDTV.
#
So there's no like, you know, hashtag like Rahul Gandhi, get a haircut, you know, something
#
Like, you know, or what is that Times Now favorite hashtag lobby, something about the
#
They have something about the lobby every day.
#
Lobby lies or lobby uses Chinese phones.
#
Normally, when I do an episode on something, I research the subject very thoroughly.
#
But I have to confess that I've watched practically no news television for the last 10 years,
#
because I can't stand it.
#
You know, a couple of thoughts come to my mind from what you just said, the second perhaps
#
One is that, you know, it seems to me that as new technology comes up, there is an element
#
of faddishness that comes into reporting in the sense of these all become boxes to take
#
that Facebook life cover, Instagram cover, this cover, without enough thought going into
#
what is happening to the trade off in terms of the effort that goes into ticking these
#
boxes and the depth of the news.
#
And the second which I'm going to turn into a question is, of course, we've all heard,
#
you know, Marshall McLuhan famous saying about the medium being a message.
#
And it strikes me that if you know, so much of your time goes into putting stuff on Facebook
#
life and looking for clips to maybe put on Twitter or whatever all these little disparate
#
things that one now has to do.
#
Doesn't that affect the depth which you can pursue a story?
#
And doesn't that then change the nature of the coverage in a negative way?
#
It does, to be honest, to me, like I said, I prefer the old days where you could really
#
spend time on a story and everything wasn't like some massive life and death event.
#
And you know, social media has brought with it certain pressures.
#
But you know, you have to learn to adapt.
#
That's the way life is, you know, things will evolve.
#
I don't think as some people have debated in the recent past, the television news is
#
It's certainly very, very problematic.
#
There are huge issues with it in India in particular right now.
#
But television viewership has exponentially shot up in the last few months.
#
So there is a huge audience for it.
#
We have to use that space responsibly.
#
And you know, we have to evolve with technology.
#
And ideally, you know, you have to have different resources for different things.
#
So we also have an NDTV, a separate social media team, etc.
#
But very often, the reporters and anchors themselves have to get involved in that process.
#
And it's exhausting, you know, I do think in the old days, one had more time to ponder
#
over a headline and I know, and also, I think, at this time, you know, like, on social media
#
every day, we all turn into experts, you know, foreign affairs, as to sub China expert hand,
#
culture, depression experts, they are personal gather highly, but you know, there was something
#
So, you know, anyway, everyone has an opinion on everything.
#
And you know, very often, I mean, I'll tell you simple things like a press release will
#
come I cover I used to cover the MEA I have to quickly look for the like, I don't have
#
time to like sit and read it properly, you know, it's like, quickly, quickly look for
#
the two or three important news points and just get it out on Twitter, get it out on
#
the NDTV social media handle, get it on air.
#
And you know, there's such a thing about Pehle Kon Karega, you know, that to me, it stresses
#
That's what I would say, one would like to like, look at things carefully sift through
#
And that's just taken for me, at least it just took a bit of the sort of fun out of
#
doing this on a regular basis.
#
As you're saying, there's a thought that strikes me a question that strikes me rather, which
#
is that, you know, you've done a lot of, you know, as opposed to a lot of the shallow news
#
coverage of the modern age, you've done a lot of deep work in the past, where you've,
#
you know, done work in POK, you've done work in Tibet, like you pointed out, after waiting
#
a year for a visa, what is the work that you're most proud of in your career?
#
And I'll make it a two part question by saying that, is there something that you're not proud
#
of that you look back and said, Hey, I wish I hadn't done that?
#
That's a good question.
#
Well, I'm proud of quite a few things.
#
I mean, I'm proud of all the documentaries I've done.
#
I did quite a few and I was really glad because NUTV gave me the space to do them, whether
#
it was the one in Tibet or the one in Iran, I went back to, I went to cover the London
#
bombings of July 2007 as an on the spot reporting job.
#
But then I went back a month later to do a bigger, in depth thing on how Muslims in Britain
#
were coping with the sort of the changes and then the way people were looking at them after
#
The POK documentary certainly was something that I was very, very proud of also because
#
it was a runner up at the Asian TV Awards and that was the year of the tsunami.
#
And so the tsunami won and, and this came second.
#
And I was a bit worried that they would see, think of it as being too political because
#
it said Pakistan occupied Kashmir, not administered Kashmir and stuff like that.
#
And but, but, you know, they saw merit in it and it was, it was a runner up, a story
#
that is actually very boring to a lot of people.
#
But I am most proud of is my work on the India US nuclear deal, which was a story I obsessively
#
tracked from beginning to end.
#
And that's how I got interested in foreign policy.
#
And that was a very, very difficult story to do because it's very technical.
#
It can be very, you know, technical and sort of very dense.
#
And you know, to break that down for TV viewers every single day and to make it interesting.
#
And then it became one of the biggest political stories of our time.
#
You know, Malmohan Singh's government also nearly fell because of it.
#
It didn't, but it could have, you know, there was a confidence vote in parliament on it.
#
So it just became like this, this amazing story to track from beginning to end.
#
Is there something I wish I shouldn't have done or that I'm not proud of?
#
There's nothing I can think of offhand, Amit, but I'll tell you something which I've never
#
Sometimes I do have doubts about whether I should have thrown Sambit Patra out of that
#
For those of us who don't know what you're talking about, what are you referring to?
#
There was then, oh, you don't know this?
#
I don't watch much news television.
#
I'm really sorry about this.
#
I think, I don't know, was it maybe three years ago or two years ago?
#
Sambit Patra was on my show and started shouting at us on air and saying that NDTV has an agenda
#
and, you know, ascribing motives to us.
#
And I told him to leave.
#
I said that if I'm sorry that I will not accept this accusation and if you don't want to be
#
on this channel, then go.
#
And you know, if you're not going to apologize, then leave.
#
And I shut his mic down.
#
I mean, it's really an infamous incident, to be honest.
#
And a lot of people were, I mean, the Roy's were very happy.
#
I mean, everybody was, the whole organization stood by me for doing that because every day,
#
you know, you had BJP Spokies sort of making digs at us all the time, questioning our sort
#
of credibility, et cetera.
#
And we got raided by the CBI.
#
I think Pranoy got raided by the CBI like two, three days later, which was a coincidence.
#
But many people sought to draw links to it.
#
But that's, you know, and then the BJP stopped coming on NDTV completely.
#
And that stands to this day, officially, they do not come on NDTV.
#
Now at that time, until today, a lot of people, most people tell me that, you know, you did
#
Somebody has to stand up and call these guys out, et cetera, et cetera.
#
But to be honest, Amit, when I look back, sometimes I look back and I think that maybe
#
I shouldn't have and that maybe I should have said my piece and then let it go.
#
And that it would have been more democratic of me to do it that way, rather than just
#
I'm very conflicted about that.
#
But that is something, if I had to relive that moment again, maybe I wouldn't do it.
#
Tell me something for someone who feels as strongly about values and issues and indeed
#
the health of our democracy as you clearly do.
#
Is that sort of like I can imagine myself losing my temper in a similar way.
#
And I remember reading about the incident now that you described it.
#
But is that sort of emotional control hard, for example, when you are, let's say you're
#
covering Kathua and there are people who are sort of defending the rapists or there are
#
people who are defending, garlanding the lynchers, for example, both issues on which, you know,
#
you've sort of spoken out, then at that moment does, you know, on the one hand, you're supposed
#
to be this objective anchor and you're sort of you have to be calm and ask sharp probing
#
But on the other hand, how can the blood not rush to your head?
#
How do you deal with that?
#
How have you faced that conflict?
#
See, in my opinion, there is absolutely no obligation to be quote unquote objective when
#
you're anchoring what is meant to be an opinion based show.
#
It's fine because like newspapers have editorial pages, right?
#
So these nine o'clock bulletins can be the editorial pages of your channel.
#
In that sense, it's perfectly OK to take a position on something.
#
I don't have a problem with that.
#
But I do have a problem with when, you know, you know, to me, there are certain things
#
which are inalienable truths, right?
#
And there are certain stories that do not have another side.
#
So for example, politicians coming out in doing rallies in defense of rape accused and
#
murder accused, like in the Katwa case, to me, that was indefensible.
#
There was no other side to the story.
#
To me, when somebody is lynched and killed, there is no other side to the story.
#
OK, so I think, yes, I mean, I think we're all human.
#
I think it's a question of I think it's perfectly OK to be emotional also.
#
But you have to also know when to pull back.
#
And that's a line that only an individual can draw.
#
I have to admit that some of the stories that have disturbed me the most in the last few
#
years have been these stories.
#
It has been depressing, actually.
#
And I've found myself often coming close to tears when one has had to have a discussion
#
on Akhlaq or one of these horrific incidents that happened all these years.
#
And you actually have someone sitting in front of you trying to defend the garlanding of
#
lynching accused or why the tricolor was draped on the men who were accused of killing Akhlaq.
#
You know, and you just I mean, you know, a lot of people would sometimes criticize us
#
and say that, why do you call, for instance, why do you call RSS spokespersons on the channel?
#
And I would say, and I still say this, that I'm sorry, but whether you like it or not,
#
they are ruling the country right now.
#
You know, they have been elected by the people and they represent what the government of
#
India thinks at the moment.
#
So we are not legitimizing them.
#
The legitimacy has come from the last two general elections.
#
So you can't to be the sort of the other liberal argument, you know, that you cannot listen
#
to the other point of view at all, no matter how horrendous it is.
#
It's interesting, because, you know, that whole debate right now that happened in the
#
New York Times over that edit page by Cotton, Tom Cotton's piece here.
#
And it was interesting that there were I think journalists more from our era who were like,
#
well, you know, he is an elected representative.
#
We may not agree with his views, but he has a right to put them across.
#
And you know, the Times has a right to put it in a context to to say we don't agree with
#
it, et cetera, whatever.
#
But should it be blanked out completely?
#
You know, so I I am conflicted on that question also right now.
#
But the fact is that I also feel it's important to confront people with who have those views
#
and pin them down on that and sort of, shall we say, shame them for some of the kind of
#
open bigotry and hatred that they profess.
#
And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, like like the hate speeches that some
#
of these guys made during the Delhi elections.
#
I had a confrontation with some of the MPs, you can't just ignore them.
#
They're members of parliament, for God's sake.
#
It's not about giving someone a platform, but they are MPs, they've been elected, they're
#
going to stand up in parliament and say stuff.
#
They need to be held accountable for the kind of hate speech that they're spewing.
#
And I think we need to do that.
#
I couldn't agree with you more.
#
It is after all our job to afflict the comfortable sort of, you know, when you're speaking of
#
politician gets on your show, a couple of thoughts come to mind.
#
One is, of course, you know, you've been doing the show Left, Right and Center, which is
#
sort of a debate show between different points of view.
#
So it's a two part question.
#
Part one is that given that people are inevitably going to take their party line and even if
#
they are not from a particular party, they are inevitably going to sort of take the line
#
of whatever ideology or identity they've chosen for themselves.
#
And all these debates become so predictable that you broadly know in advance what everyone
#
That's part one of the question.
#
And part two is that then behind the scenes, all of these people do what they do.
#
I think the incentives of politics makes politicians behave in renal and reprehensible ways.
#
But outside of that political framework, have you found not just politicians, but generally
#
people in public life to be different from what their public personas are?
#
Like would you say that a politician you cannot agree with on issues can also turn out to
#
be a nice guy and a good person?
#
And there are these, you know, other sides to them that you get to know.
#
I mean, you see that all the time.
#
And yes, you're partly right about, you know, these political debates, in a sense, becoming
#
very sort of predictable.
#
But I want to say something here.
#
I want to say that why is it that we in this country, which is the world's largest democracy,
#
which has this thriving political scene?
#
Why is the word politicization a bad word?
#
In my view, every major issue should be politicized.
#
And people as citizens, as voters should be listening to what representatives are saying
#
on those issues so that they can make up their minds on what side they are on on particular
#
So for instance, when people would say during the Nirbhaya gang rape time, don't politicize,
#
you know, the sexual violence against women.
#
I mean, I have been saying this for the longest time that the problem is we haven't politicized
#
We need to hold our publicly elected representatives accountable for the fact that women don't
#
feel safe while walking on the street or that, you know, convictions are abysmally low, etc.
#
We need to politicize these issues.
#
And I at least would want to hear what each political party has to say about it.
#
So similarly, even on foreign policy and security issues, just because it's the Congress or
#
an opposition party raising it, it doesn't mean that it's wrong.
#
I think there are legitimate questions that need to be, for instance, you know, now it's
#
become sort of, again, anti-national to question anything about the armed forces or to question
#
any intelligence gaps or intelligence failures.
#
I mean, to me, it is actually patriotic to raise those questions.
#
Not just now, but I'm talking about even earlier during the UPA time that, you know, you need
#
to ask, you know, why lapses happen?
#
For instance, look at what's happening in China and the dark at the moment.
#
You had a clear situation where you had a section of the media that was just trying
#
to project a narrative of all is well, which may who are it is a very small incident.
#
Look at the way it has blown up the lack of transparency, the lack of information that's
#
And I think the opposition, while standing by the country and standing by the government
#
is well within its rights to say, boss, you know, we need answers also on why this happened
#
and how this happened, and please give us those answers.
#
So I don't think that there's anything wrong with that.
#
I think it's the way that those debates are structured.
#
The problem, Amit, is that, you know, that they are, of course, completely in these these
#
shrill shouting matches, you can have perfectly good conversations, even debates, if you want
#
to call them that, with people on different ideological from different ideologies sitting
#
together, different political parties that can be perfectly civil and yet disagree with
#
one another, where you don't have to be screaming at each other all the time.
#
You know, but much of what's happening on Indian television today is contrived.
#
It is you call the fringe, you know, you decide that some guy in a long beard represents all
#
Or you decide that some guy wearing a saffron robe represents all Hindus in India.
#
So you just, you know, kind of pit two religions against each other, you start screaming in
#
And that's why it's been reduced to a farce.
#
And in my experience, I've given this example often, I actually found that if you do debates
#
well, and you have a good conversation on important issues, it does make people sit
#
up and think, for example, when the gang rape happened in Delhi, it was the first time I
#
saw mainstream news television night after night on prime time talking about sexual violence
#
And it forced the print media to make it a page one story as well.
#
And I'm not joking, I think I did a prime time show on that story, like every day for
#
the next like, maybe two months, you know, and it made a huge difference because at least
#
people were talking about it, people were, I mean, people came out and they were agitated.
#
And that was to me that that's good that in a democracy that that people were demanding
#
I mean, not in the way that it turned out ultimately just became about a hanging and
#
not a bigger debate as it should have been about safety about about the judiciary speeding
#
up cases and convictions and all but that apart, I'm just saying that just even having
#
that awareness to have that conversation, it became really important.
#
So I think on China, for example, it is important to hear the opposition's voice.
#
So I don't understand this thing of tootwing, you know, what political parties think we
#
Let's hold them accountable.
#
Let's listen to what they have to say.
#
Couldn't agree with you more.
#
Let's let's kind of get back to social media because for a moment there, we just discussed
#
the positive side and one can't really end with that because one of the you know, the
#
dark side of social media is, of course, the enormous amount of vitriol that is spread,
#
the rumors that is spread, the abuse that, you know, people are constantly confronted
#
with and all of it, especially harder for a woman.
#
So now you are on the one hand, you're looking at social media closely for tips and new angles
#
like this hospital has run out of bed or there are interesting points of view which you can
#
But on the other hand, there is also so much ugliness and it cannot but help affect you
#
You know, the journalist Kanika Kohli had a thread I found quite moving on Twitter recently
#
about how she was personally so affected when the IT troll farms came after her that she,
#
you know, almost had an anxiety attack and had to kind of go to the loo, very moving
#
thread and you know, and all prominent women kind of go through that.
#
How did you deal with that?
#
It's not nice, Amit, it's not nice at all.
#
And I mean, I really feel for Kanika because I understand how she would have felt it's,
#
you know, the thing is that on social media, on Twitter in particular, I don't know.
#
I mean, it's sort of a free for all against women, they'll say that we respect women and
#
then you know, they'll abuse you in the next sentence and they somehow think that talking
#
about a woman's personal life or, you know, her sex life or something is, is somehow demeaning.
#
I mean, it is it is extremely difficult as a woman to be on social media.
#
I would agree with that.
#
And frankly, I would not even be on Twitter if it wasn't for the fact that people would,
#
you know, sort of creating these fake accounts in my name and tweeting and then people would
#
message me on every day and say, Oh, watch how have you said this on Twitter?
#
And I would say, No, that's not me.
#
So finally, I had how many accounts can I complain against, right?
#
Twitter would keep taking them down, but I can't like, you know, do it every week.
#
So I decided I had to come on at least have a verified account so that whatever is going
#
out there is going out there in my name and that so those those fake accounts actually
#
But otherwise, I honestly don't find it fulfilling at all.
#
It is it is extremely, extremely toxic, particularly so for women.
#
And I understand where Karnika comes from in that because everyone deals with these
#
I've developed a much thicker skin now than I had maybe like, say, five or six years ago
#
when it really would affect me.
#
Now it doesn't in that way.
#
But everyone has different ways to deal with things.
#
Not everyone will react the same way.
#
And that's why it's it's not a safe space for women.
#
And do you have a hack to deal with it?
#
Like, did you ignore notifications or, you know, do you just mute everyone who abuses
#
So over time, you see less of it now.
#
But then a friend of mine, why are you polite?
#
And he's on Twitter as well.
#
And he's like, I just I just block abusers.
#
So anyone who abuses, I block and I block out misogynists, you know, and those that just
#
are annoying because you can be annoyed.
#
And I'm sorry, that's there's no free speech argument here.
#
You're free to speak now.
#
You go and speak and abuse and do whatever you want on your timeline.
#
I have I also have the right to not have to listen to your crap.
#
No one's entitled to our attention and the other sort of aspect of social media is that
#
what social media does is that it polarizes the discourse in very drastic ways in the
#
sense that the discourse becomes very tribal.
#
We form our own echo chambers and then we need to, you know, keep posturing to raise
#
our status within our own echo chamber, which can often mean sort of abusing the other side
#
or whatever, and it gets more and more polarized.
#
And what this means for liberals often is that you have all these online purity tests
#
where you will have people who are, you know, perfectly good liberals in every way, getting
#
attacked by other liberals for not being liberal enough.
#
And I have seen this happen to you as well, like even in the Tom Cotton case, that's basically
#
David Bennett, opinion editor who was made to resign is, you know, an impeccable liberal
#
in every way who was just following this basic journalistic convention of giving the other
#
side a chance to say their piece so that readers can judge for themselves.
#
And how do you feel about these sort of online purity tests and these mobs that descend upon
#
you if you deviate from the party line?
#
Well, see, that's the thing, right, that I'm glad that I don't fit into a particular box.
#
I am neither black nor white.
#
And like most people, I'm somewhere in between, you know, and that's perfectly okay with me.
#
I mean, I have a certain view, for example, on the way India and Delhi handles the situation
#
within Kashmir, but I have a very different view on the way, on Pakistan's role in Kashmir.
#
So I can be both and I'm not going to apologize for that, you know.
#
So in any case, the conservative right wing thinks I'm too liberal and I'm not the conservative
#
But I just find that the so-called liberals are actually often, Amit, the most illiberal
#
people you can come across in the way that they go after people for having a different
#
And I expect it of the extreme right wing because I ain't no friend of theirs and they
#
ain't no friends of mine, let's face it.
#
We are completely ideologically at odds, right?
#
But even, I mean, among liberals, why can't someone have a nuanced point of view on something?
#
And there's nothing wrong with that.
#
And therefore, that's why we get stuck in echo chambers.
#
But I mean, frankly, to me, that explains why Donald Trump might get elected president
#
again and why he got elected the first time, because in America also, you had these echo
#
chambers where, you know, people were just not willing to listen to what was actually
#
happening on the ground.
#
And incidentally, Shekhar Gupta shared a very good piece, I don't remember who wrote it,
#
on this whole thing about what's happening in American newsrooms.
#
And it had the sort of the New York Times resignation as an example of it, about just
#
how illiberal liberals have become.
#
So you know, frankly, I now just wear it as a badge of honor.
#
I am entitled to my opinions.
#
If I'm not liberal enough for you, screw you.
#
No, and it also strikes me that, you know, the thing about the extreme right is they
#
wear their bigotry on their sleeve.
#
But the extreme left can dress it up in sanctimony, which, you know, irritates me a little bit
#
I mean, you know, as someone who's covered the conflict in JNK has, you know, seen personally
#
what it has, what Pakistan sponsored terrorism has done in the Kashmir Valley.
#
I have no qualms in calling out Pakistan's role in sponsoring terrorism and kind of bloodshed
#
it has unleashed in our country.
#
But at the same time, I am critical of the way the government has handled things in Kashmir
#
with an iron fist, particularly after the 5th of August last year, you have detained
#
people, you've detained people for months on end, a former chief minister is still under
#
This is the world's largest, longest internet blackout.
#
You still don't have 4G internet up.
#
And what the same rules of law do not apply to the people of Kashmir.
#
Are Kashmiris not our people?
#
So I, you know, you can be both, you know, you can be both.
#
That's what I'm saying.
#
I mean, like this liberal thing of, you know, then they're like, oh, I mean, you know, oh,
#
she's talking about Pakistan this way, because, you know, she must be feeling the pressure
#
No, that's always been my point of view.
#
My documentary from POK, which got that award, did because, you know, it took that line that
#
And yet I'm somebody who is for dialogue between India and Pakistan, because I don't think
#
So I can be that also, no, I'm just saying that people are not black and white.
#
Views are not black and white.
#
And that's the problem on social media and even on television, frankly, the moment you
#
pit people in a debate as foreign against, it becomes really banal and you oversimplify
#
And one of the ways I found of judging tribal thinking is that if you are against Modi, can
#
you say even one good thing about him or if you're for him, can you say even one bad thing
#
And the answer is often no.
#
And then you know that in that case, that's just tribal thinking because everyone contains
#
multitudes and even the person you're against has done some good things.
#
And even the person you're for has flaws that you should be awake to.
#
You know, my next question is sort of it kind of strikes me and I'm again sort of thinking
#
aloud here that when I look back in the last 25 years or so, the one profession where I
#
can see that women have visibly excelled and, you know, made an impression and become incredible
#
role models is in TV journalism.
#
And I'm of course thinking of people like, you know, you and Barkha where, you know,
#
some of our finest TV journalists are women, that's indisputable.
#
And at the same time, like, does it sort of irritate you when you're covered, not just
#
as a great TV journalist, but as a TV journalist who's a woman?
#
For example, I was searching online for articles of you and interviews of you and I came across
#
this piece which was headlined, No Skirting of Issues, which within the piece headlines
#
like, you know, quote, the importance of dressing cannot be dismissed, stop quote, and then
#
quote again, planning her outfit on a daily basis is one of the first things she probably
#
I don't even remember, I'm mortified.
#
This came in verve, you know, so I don't know what the journalists must have asked to get
#
you to talk about your daily outfit planning.
#
And I think you correctly put her in a place by saying that when I wake up, I'm thinking
#
of stories and I just pick up the first clothes that come to mind.
#
I remember this now, I think she was quite gutted because I actually honestly don't remember
#
the last time I thought about what I had to wear.
#
But yeah, that's, that's a funny thing that you reminded me about.
#
And does it become irritating when you know, people will try to put you into a box and
#
think of you as a woman journalist or a Kashmiri pundit journalist and just look at you in
#
Does that kind of which you wouldn't do yourself as a journalist?
#
I don't buy the woman box to be honest, because it's true.
#
I mean, the fact is that for women things are are generally much tougher in any profession.
#
And you know, I think it's great when women sort of become role models for other young
#
women and their peers, and you know, are able to break certain glass ceilings.
#
And I think that's what's great about NDTV in particular, because I was telling someone
#
yesterday who was talking to me about, you know, my journey as a woman journalist.
#
And she was like, I'm sure you faced biases.
#
And I said, actually, I haven't.
#
I mean, because I've lived in this bubble in NDTV, where most of our editors have been
#
women, our prime time anchors have been women.
#
Gender was never a factor when an assignment was was given to you, whether it was an earthquake
#
Of course, you took care of basic safety.
#
But you know, gender wasn't a factor.
#
So apart from, you know, some sort of leery remarks by some people here and there when
#
one step outside that, I'm glad that I was, you know, in this environment where it was
#
But so I don't mind the woman part of it, you know, I I'm okay with that.
#
But to be honest, no, I mean, no, no one's asked me since that interview about what lipstick
#
shade is my favorite or something.
#
And there's nothing wrong with that, by the way, I really like lipstick.
#
And that's still, you know, I mean, that's who I am.
#
Just just keep that in mind.
#
I love I love lipstick and I love kajal.
#
At which point I have to ask you, what is your favorite shade?
#
This always timeless red, Amit.
#
So, you know, we have 10 minutes to go before you have to head out.
#
So I'm not going to ask you about a subject which, you know, we could discuss in a full
#
episode, which is, of course, Kashmir, which, you know, you've seen up close as a journalist,
#
you have that personal element with it.
#
I don't think we can do it justice in the few minutes that we have left.
#
So I'll sort of ask my standard question with which I end a lot of my episodes where I ask
#
guests on the subject of their choice, what gives you hope and what gives you despair.
#
So looking at the Indian media, where we are today, where, you know, on the on the one
#
hand, you have this polarization and this race to the bottom in TV news.
#
But on the other hand, you also have the growth of technology and, you know, the unknown unknowns
#
which might change everything for the better.
#
Looking say 10 years into the future, what gives you hope and what gives you despair?
#
I want to first say that I don't think that the race to the bottom is just on television.
#
And I want to say very clearly that I think it's in the media as a whole, including the
#
Because when you look at the reporting that is done, I know that a lot of it, even in
#
our newspapers, is just government spin.
#
It has become dependent on government handouts and press releases.
#
I'll give you an example.
#
And I think all of us in the media need to reflect on this.
#
If certain sources quote unquote are telling you that X number of Chinese soldiers have
#
been killed, you know, in this battle that happened the other day, why aren't they seeing
#
You know, this happened during Balakot as well, where suddenly sources started appearing.
#
And I knew who the source initially was, which is why people went with it.
#
But to me, it's deeply problematic when the media is putting out unverified stuff and
#
not demanding that the government go on record with certain things.
#
So it has become, unfortunately, even in the print media, a lot of it is spin and press
#
I'm tired of reading pieces about why ex-politician is sleeping only four hours a day.
#
I'm tired of reading op-eds, by the way, also by ministers and, you know, only opposition
#
leaders and, you know, with no nuance at all.
#
So, you know, print, I think, has also gone down that road to the bottom.
#
What gives me hope is those that do stand out despite the pressures that are there,
#
which is, as you mentioned, there are some web portals that are doing a great job of
#
I think there are still a couple of newspapers that are doing a good job, like the Indian
#
Express and the Hindu, with their flaws.
#
NDTV, I'm not saying we're not, and NDTV is not flawed, there are flaws with us also.
#
But you know, we're all holding our heads above the water and doing the best that we
#
And, you know, the rest of them, frankly, they don't inspire much hope.
#
But I do get hope from the rest of, from the examples that stand out.
#
I mean, that the fact that there are people who are willing to push back, that gives me
#
And I, in any case, I don't like to despair.
#
So I think I'd rather be hopeful.
#
Thanks so much for coming on the show, Nidhi, I hope you have a good time at Harvard.
#
And if you can, please put your course out as a MOOC, so other people like me can also
#
sort of take it and learn from a distance.
#
But in any case, all the best, and I'm very sure that we haven't heard the last of you.
#
Thank you so much, Amit.
#
No, I don't know how to keep quiet.
#
It was nice talking to you.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you can follow Nidhi on Twitter, at Nidhi.
#
You can follow me on Twitter, at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-B-A-R-M-A, and in case you haven't
#
yet signed up for this exciting course I am teaching called Tik Tok and Indian Society.
#
Well, it begins on Wednesday, June 24th.
#
So hop on over to sceneunseen.in slash Tik Tok to check it out.
#
Also do check out my new weekly economics podcast co-hosted by Vivek Kaul called Econ
#
You will find it at econcentral.in or in your podcast player of choice.
#
You can browse past episodes of The Scene and the Unseen at sceneunseen.in.
#
Thank you for listening.
