Shows
Election Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election15. S. Y. Quraishi - Transparency is key for the Election Commission not to lose public trustIn this episode, former Chief Election Commissioner, S. Y. Quraishi, says that transparency is the key to public trust for an institution like the Election Commission of India. Even though he refused to comment on the conduct of the Election Commission now, he says he would never have kept political parties waiting for a meeting. He would have held as many press conferences as required to clarify any issues. “Transparency is the key”, he says, adding that he would be available 24x7 for anyone who wanted to meet him.
He talks about how the media was once both...
2024-06-0339 minElection Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election14. Pratik Sinha - A lot more misinformation came from the very top in these electionsIn this episode, Pratik Sinha, founder of AltNews, the fact-checking and media watchdog website, says the amount of misinformation spread directly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections is much more than in 2019 or 2014.
He also says that misinformation peaks during periods when “narratives have to be managed”, giving the example of how blaming the Tablighi Jamaat for spreading COVID was a way to deflect attention from people walking thousands of kilometres during the lockdown to return to their villages. However, now the spread of misinformation seems to be at a constant high, instead of th...
2024-06-0133 minElection Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election13. Pervaiz Alam - BBC has toned down its criticism of Modi and the governmentIn this episode of Election Beat, senior broadcaster Pervaiz Alam, who began his career at All India Radio and worked at BBC World Service for several years, says the coverage of the 2024 elections by YouTubers is a point of interest in the western media's coverage of the elections.
Pervaiz Alam also speaks about the restructuring of the BBC after the “tax survey” carried out by Indian Income Tax authorities soon after it released the two-part documentary India: The Modi Question, which was eventually banned from screening in the country by the BJP. He says that since that inci...
2024-05-3031 minElection Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election12. K. G. Suresh - “It’s no more about news, it's about ideology”In this episode, K G Suresh, Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Journalism and Communication in Bhopal, and formerly PTI's chief political correspondent who’s also worked at Asian News Network, says television journalism in India has been a "big disappointment". He asks what credibility can studio analyses of the ground situation have without reportage from the ground. TV audiences, he says, are now choosing channels according to their ideology, and TV journalists are choosing sides to keep their audiences. Meanwhile, serious audiences are moving to online media, to You Tubers and to some extent, even newspapers.
K G...
2024-05-2933 minElection Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election11. Umesh Upadhyay - Western media thinks it’ll decide which government should be formed in IndiaIn this episode, Umesh Upadhyay, a former head of TV18 and author of Western Media Narratives On India: From Gandhi to Modi, claims that international coverage of India is biased and is used by western governments to further their own foreign policy goals in the country. He says foreign media’s coverage of India’s situation and circumstances during COVID was “very biased”, even to the extent of being “racist”.
He also speaks about how the merging of the dual roles of anchor and editor in one person has been responsible for the downfall of television news. He says that...
2024-05-2829 minElection Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election10. Vamsee Juluri - Media should be “more truthful, less greedy, less scared of politicians”In this episode of Election Beat, Vamsee Juluri, professor of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco, and the author of Rearming Hinduism: Nature, Hinduphobia and the Return of Intelligence, says the Indian media is too focused on Hindu nationalism to please politicians and therefore fails in its duty of civilisational revival.
He observes that TV channels are noisy and the polarisation in the name of ratings is driving a “race to the bottom”. He argues that the relationship between news media and India as a democracy has changed “foundationally” and to understand this, one needs to go ba...
2024-05-2728 minElection Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election9. Manisha Pande - TV works as the government’s megaphoneIn this episode, Manisha Pande, managing editor of Newslaundry and writer and host of TV Newsance, a critique of broadcast news, says the most troubling development of the last few years is that television news has turned against the people whose travails it is supposed to cover. Even public rejection of certain TV channels by people on the ground, their refusal to speak to reporters of these channels, is not forcing a rethink in studios about their pro-government news format. This, she says, is because access to the government has become all important to the business of TV news...
2024-05-2534 minElection Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election8. Sitaraman Shankar - Politicians need to develop a thicker skinIn this episode of Election Beat, Sitaraman Shankar, editor of Deccan Herald and CEO of the group that publishes Deccan Herald and Prajavani, says the government needs to be more transparent, interact with the media more and do less headline management. He says the newspaper’s editorial positions that are often critical of the Modi government are not about being anti-BJP, but are critical of certain policies.
He also points out that the newspaper is an “an equal opportunity offender”, criticising the Congress-run state government, just as it has done when other political parties in the state were in...
2024-05-2327 minElection Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election7. Saba Naqvi - YouTubers are the important corrective on the media sceneIn this episode of Election Beat, senior political journalist, commentator and writer Saba Naqvi speaks about the sanitisation of hate speeches in the mainstream media through “factual coverage”, and the absence of outrage at the egregious statements made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She says media houses are “running” to do “safe” interviews with Modi, in which follow-up questions are not allowed. As a reporter who has covered the saffron party since the 1990s, she observes that BJP beat reporters now know little of what is happening behind the scenes, and have to stick to party briefings.
Saba Naqvi a...
2024-05-2042 minElection Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election6. Vinod Pavarala - “I’m telling my students to stop watching television news”In this episode, Vinod Pavarala, Senior Professor of Communication at the University of Hyderabad, says news media are promoting a singular narrative which permeates across the society and ends up negating the country's plurality. He says that the free media in a democracy like India is expected to do a lot more than follow “objectivity rituals”, such as he said-she said reporting. But, he says, in the present atmosphere, the idea of holding a government to account is not widely understood.
Pavarala commends YouTubers for asking the tough questions, but also points out that it’s not the sam...
2024-05-1732 minElection Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election5. Mrinal Pande - Hindi media are an apt vehicle for religious fundamentalismIn this episode of Election Beat, Mrinal Pande, writer, journalist and former editor of the Hindi daily Hindustan, tells Savyasaachi Jain and Nirupama Subramanian why Hindi news organisations have bought into the narrative of Hindutva. According to her, from the time when the Hindi press was ignored by most political parties, the right wing was cultivating it, having sized up its reach across 11 populous states.
Mrinal Pande recalls that at the height of the Khalistani movement in India, Hindi newspapers wrote “derisively” about minority communities. She makes the point that while English speakers in India have access to a...
2024-05-1532 minElection Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election4. R. Jagannathan - “It’s the PM’s choice whether he wants to meet the media or not”In this episode, R Jagannathan, editorial director of Swarajya, a centre-right publication, tells Savyasaachi Jain and Nirupama Subramanian that the ruling party has always been very keen on managing the media, referring to Narendra Modi’s lack of willingness in being interviewed as something not new to India’s media landscape.
He claims that the use of draconian laws being used against journalists today is not unique to the BJP government, adding that other state governments use the same instruments, as did the preceding UPA government.
Jagannathan also talks about the media revenue model that has m...
2024-05-1328 minElection Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election3. Kalpana Sharma - “The media’s not asking the critical questions”In this episode, Kalpana Sharma, who has worked at Times of India, The Indian Express and The Hindu, and is a columnist writing on the print media for the online platform Newslaundry, tells Savyasaachi Jain and Nirupama Subramanian that with a few exceptions, mainstream print media has failed its task of critical examination of politics, restricting themselves to coverage of events and speeches without questioning, fact-checking or investigation.
Kalpana recalls the years after the Emergency as a time when, according to her, the media was adversarial and unafraid. She talks about how “corporatisation of the media” — not referri...
2024-05-0930 min
Election Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election2. Girish Kuber - “The media lives in echo chambers”In this episode, Girish Kuber, the influential editor of Loksatta, the Marathi daily from the Indian Express stable, says media often get their election coverage wrong because journalists tend to report what they wish or hope to happen as opposed to what is actually happening on the ground. They tend to write for their peers and sources, not for the reading public, and this in turn affects credibility.
Kuber tells Savyasaachi and Nirupama why he believes traditional media that once had the ability to influence political outcomes, is now largely sidelined. He points to the advent of...
2024-05-0626 min
Election Beat – Indian Media and the 2024 General Election1. Neerja Chowdhury - “Modi has polarised the media”In this episode, Neerja Chowdhury, the veteran columnist, political commentator and author of the bestseller How Prime Ministers Decide, takes a long-term view of election coverage over the decade.
She talks to Nirupama Subramanian and Savyasaachi Jain about how journalists try to catch the prevailing mood and undercurrents in an election.
The dominant issue in this election is Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she says. She also reveals how the relationship between journalists and politicians has changed over the decades, with the latter becoming less tolerant of criticism.
2024-05-0127 min