“Rhea Chakraborty only speaks to a select few channels,” I heard one Republic Bharat reporter speak into the camera. “Is she afraid of Republic Bharat?”
Just then, she directed her cameraperson to pan towards a man leaving Primrose Building and started yelling, “This is an informer of Rhea Chakraborty.” The man ignored her and went on his way.
He was Ram, a watchman at the building. Through the day, Ram would repeatedly face disrespect and humiliation from Republic TV crews, with the videos of some of these incidents going viral. Seeing the Republic Bharat reporter badger Ram, journalists from other channels joined in.
It seemed that they all thought Ram was their property, not a free man deserving of respect. When Ram returned after some time with a taxi, the same Republic Bharat reporter directed her cameraperson to follow him.
What's crazy is to watch "reporters" make a celeb out of a random woman who claims that the Chakraborty family practises black magic.
When asked how she knows this, she simply says: "mujhe sab pata hai." And that's that. Woman is an Arnab fan obviously.
The shift to aggressive reporting can be attributed to scale of devastation/mishandling. Reporters & editors clearly see that "readers want the truth to be told". Others offered a branding explanation: “Our managing director says Bhaskar must always stand with public opinion."
Another thing to note is Bhaskar's entry into digital: “Bhaskar has injected a new zeal in its digital team in Uttar Pradesh. Our newspaper is not published in Uttar Pradesh, and this is an attempt to establish it via the digital route."
There are plenty of journalists in India working for Indian orgs who are reporting on the pandemic bravely/meticulously. Noida-based studio ≠ 'domestic' media. In fact, Rana Ayyub hasn't reported on the pandemic but is repeatedly called on as a talkinghead in international media
Even a pro-BJP channel like Aaj Tak does have reporters on the ground getting us important updates from the ground. It's another matter that anchors like Anjana et al are not using their material to question the government on primetime.
Rana Ayyub has become the go-to person of lazy international media panels for everything from farmers protest to the pandemic, often pedalling half-baked exaggerations without putting in the rigour of reporting that many other Indian journalists do.
"Our job is also to give voice to people who don’t have it. And at a lot of these crematoriums people are coming up to us and expressing their grief and anger.”
As deaths from Covid surged in New York last year, Reuters, Washington Post, CNN, New York Times, BBC, Telegraph showed drone footage of caskets being buried in mass graves. There were similar reports from graveyards in Brazil, Italy and the UK.
India isn’t being singled out.
“This is the truth. We are documenting the truth and bearing witness to it,” said a reporter for a British media organisation. “It is very easy to lament the coverage and blame the messenger and far more difficult to ask for accountability. But nobody is making things up...”
Big win for @newslaundry against an extremely brainless attempt at harassing @tweets_prateekg for doing his job. The story in question was about layoffs in Sakal Times & they took umbrage to us using their logo for a story that is ABOUT the group. newslaundry.com/2021/04/21/no-…
It would have been a “completely different matter” if the articles used Sakal’s trademark to “portray” Newslaundry as the Sakal Media Group, the court pointed out, but instead, “there was no suggestion that the said news portal itself was that of Sakal”.
"RSS can be slow, but we need to act fast as the time is running out for us.”
In Amta constituency of Howrah, BJP has fielded one of its vocal critics — Hindu Samhati president for whom the RSS is too centrist. Report on the organisation & its men. newslaundry.com/2021/03/20/str…
The Hindu Samhati is home for pracharaks who have left the RSS fold. The organisation now attracts men who have formerly worked with mainstream political parties. Like Banti Khan who was born and brought up in 'Congress' culture.
“I attended Tapan Ghosh’s meeting of Hindu Samhati and really liked it,” Khan said. “My eyes opened up to how Muslims have captured our land, how Congress distorted history, and I joined the Samhita and now work with the BJP.”
.@ndtv is now showing a split-screen with visuals from farmer's protest. Rest of the channels remain on the DD feed.
NDTV's coverage is quite strange to watch. There's live commentary from the R-Day parade occupying most of the screen with visuals from ANI on what seems like tear gas gone off at the protest site. I am sure they have reporters on ground to cut live to?
What's the point of private news networks if everyone *has to* show the state broadcaster. People who want to see the parade can go to DD. Private news networks should be able to show reports along with R-Day parade. Especially when there's lathicharge happening in Delhi!