Newslaundry Podcast

Help us understand what you like, or dislike, about NL Hafta before it goes behind the paywall again. Take the survey here. This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal, and Jayashree Arunachalam are joined by journalist Sudipto Mondal.The conversation kicks off with the panelists discussing the Hyderabad floods. Jayashree talks about how flooding is often an annual problem in some states but it’s never solved because this isn’t a “sexy” issue.Moving on to the TRP scam, Abhinandan says he’s “never seen media reporting about the media so much ever.” On how journalists have come together to condemn Republic, Sudipto questions the credibility of these journalists, asking: “Where did straightforward journalism go?”The discussion shifts to advertisers choosing not to support “toxic” news channels and the backlash to the Tanishq ad. Manisha talks about how, in some cases, it’s the media that “creates” this outrage, and explains her issues with the phrase “social media out

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Anand Vardhan, and Jayashree Arunachalam are joined by Kiruba Munusamy, Supreme Court advocate and activist. The conversation kicks off with Kiruba explaining the project she’s working on now, researching caste. She points out how a series of Supreme Court judgements, including as recent as 2018, dealt with cases of violence against Dalits by deciding against the Dalit community and the victims.Abhinandan asks whether the high occurrence of caste-based violence in Tamil Nadu is a reflection of the failure of Periyar’s movement. Kiruba says: “I wouldn’t say it’s a failure of the Periyar movement or the failure of a Dalit movement. I think we should say it is a failure of humanity in India. It is a failure of upper caste humankind...and that’s why these incidents happened. And Periyar didn’t have a magic wand with which he could turn the entire society without caste..."Jayashree talks about the media’s coverage of issues of violence aga

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, and Raman Kirpal are joined by Nisha Susan, journalist, author and founder of The Ladies Finger.The conversation begins with the Hathras rape. Manisha details the suffering of the victim’s family at the hands of the authorities, especially the police’s forced cremation of the body. The panel agrees that this would not have happened so unceremoniously had the victim belonged to an upper caste. Abhinandan and Nisha compare this with the story of Bhagat Singh, where the authorities had been scared to return his body to his family for fear of backlash.Raman points out that the victim had been shifted in and out of three hospitals while in critical condition, which might have caused her health to deteriorate. The panel analyses alarming statistics on how four or five Dalit women are raped every day.On the Supreme Court’s acquittal of all the accused in the Babri Masjid demolition, Raman says he’s unsurprised. “Any case that has d

This week on NL Hafta, the usual team of Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal and Anand Vardhan are joined by Newslaundry’s Jayashree Arunachalam and author Chetan Bhagat.The discussion starts off with the economic slowdown in India. Chetan says, “India attempted one of the strictest lockdowns. It’s expected that we will also have the biggest contraction.” He points out that fiscal measures are needed to distribute wealth while also liberalising the economy for businesses with moves that are more than just media headlines. It needs to be globally noticeable, he adds.The panel moves on to discussing the current state of the media in India, given the ongoing “SSR frenzy”. The Indian audience’s obsession with entertainment, even while watching the news, is what Chetan believes is driving the media to focus on sensationalism. On the media in Tamil Nadu, Jayashree believes it’s an “outlier” compared to Delhi media, and Anand makes the same point with regional media outlets, print or otherwise. In both Ta

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri and Raman Kirpal are joined by Abantika Ghosh, journalist with ThePrint and Revati Laul, an independent journalist and author of The Anatomy of Hate.The discussion begins with the current situation of Covid-19 in India—from the sero surveys to the possibility of a vaccine in a few months and if it will even be reliable. Abantika pointing towards the failure of the lockdown says,“The claim that lockdown saved lives is not accurate.” The panel talks about people’s growing negligence towards the pandemic. Revati talks about the Covid situation in her neighbourhood stressing on the low number of tests. The panel then moves on to Sudarshan TV’s problematic show, ‘UPSC Jihad.’ They discuss the Supreme Court’s intervention in the matter and the reasons why hate-ridden shows are not censored by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry and National Broadcasters Association. The panel, highlighting how an atmosphere of hate has been created over the last

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Anand Vardhan, Manisha Pande, and Raman Kirpal are joined by M. K. Venu, founding editor of The Wire to discuss the recession, the state of the media, and everything that happened this week.The panel discusses and debates the possible paths of India’s economic recovery, whether the government’s approach to the lockdown made things worse, and why India has experienced greater negative impacts due to the coronavirus than other global economic powerhouses. Venu gives insight into the predicaments of the Indian worker, and says, “In India, we claim to be socialist, but we are the harshest capitalist state that can ever be.”Venu also weighs in on the “sensationalist end of broadcast media,” The Wire’s approach to journalism, and how the distribution of corporate spending on advertising is changing rapidly. They also discuss the paradigm shift in which news organisations influence, and which ones are influenced. On the prevailing respectability of the print me

On this week’s episode of NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Mehraj D Lone are joined by Patricia Mukhim, editor of Shillong Times.Patricia opens the conversation by providing insight into Meghalaya’s maternal and neonatal mortality crisis. She speaks about her personal experiences in working to create awareness about contraception, reproductive rights, and family planning in rural parts of the state, and the “vicious cycle” of malnutrition that is one of the principal causes of this problem.On the death of Pranab Mukherjee, the panelists reflect on their experiences of reporting on and about the former president. Abhinandan recalls being invited to Mukherjee’s garden for an interview, while Patricia describes him as “the only Delhi politician who really understood the Northeast”.The panel then discusses last week’s pellet firing by policemen on a Muharram procession in Srinagar. Mehraj says, “Pellet guns are used for hunting. In Kashmir, they’re being used on people...That’s been th

This week’s episode of NL Hafta features an all-star panel of Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Anand Vardhan, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, and Raman Kirpal. They are joined by Banjot Kaur, health and public policy correspondent for Down To Earth magazine.The conversation begins with a round-up of Covid developments from the past weeks, including progress being made in India and abroad towards the production of a suitable vaccine. Banjot addresses common misconceptions about vaccine implementation, serological surveys, and herd immunity, noting that even after a vaccine becomes available, the possibility of life returning to normal is “a long shot”, and that we must be prepared for “huge changes in our daily lives” in the long run. The panel also talks about the accuracy of case numbers across the country, some states’ over-reliance on rapid antigen detection tests, and the government’s “foolhardy” denial of the existence of community transmission.Another topic of discussion is the government’s decision

This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, and Mehraj D Lone are joined by Pratik Sinha, founder of Alt News.First up, the panel discusses the Wall Street Journal report on political partisanship within Facebook India. The panelists talk about Facebook’s “special relationship” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, how news dissemination has changed over the past decade, and whether social media should be considered a public service.Manisha reflects on Facebook’s influence on international affairs and its responsibility in ensuring impartiality in non-Western countries. “We need to judge them for at least the façade of the global company they portray themselves to be,” she says.In the context of Australia ordering social media sites to share news advertising revenue with traditional media organisations, Pratik notes that Facebook has “overarching control over internet infrastructure...and very little transparency and accountability”. He highlights the need for independent media organis

In this week’s episode of NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kirpal and Mehraj D Lone are joined by Hartosh Singh Bal, political editor of the Caravan magazine.The conversation begins with an analysis of the events surrounding last week’s attacks on three Caravan journalists while they were interviewing residents in Northeast Delhi’s Subhash Mohalla. One of the journalists, a woman, was sexually harassed. “They were taking photographs out in the street, not in somebody’s house, not of anybody,” Hartosh explains. “I have been detained before...Never have I encountered what happened with our reporter...what literally amounts to assault and sexual harassment.”On Kamala Harris being announced as the presumptive Democratic candidate for vice president of the United States, the panel discusses reactions from the Hindu Right in India and the US, and Harris’s controversial career as an attorney general. They also talk about the newfound disillusionment in her campaign by the Indian media

In this week’s episode, the in-house panel featuring Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Raman Kripal is joined by Mayank Shekhar, a film critic and recipient of the ‘Ramnath Goenka Award. He’s also the author of Amazon’s bestselling book, ‘Name Place Animal Thing’ and also has a podcast titled ‘Sit With Hitlist’The discussion begins with the problematic coverage of Sushant Singh Rajput’s death and how it has now transformed into a political issue. Mayank says, “It’s a toxic mix of everything that is wrong with the country — the state of politics, and news media.” “ Whatsapp messages are now taken seriously on news channels” which has led to ED inquistioning Rhea Chakraborty about her makeup, adds Abhinandan.Raman is of the view that the Enforcement Directorate’s involvement in the entire affair confirms that the case has become political. Manisha thinks this will last till the Bihar elections. She also expresses her shock at women anchors like Anjana Om Kashyap and Navika leading the toxic reporta

In this week’s Newslaundry’s panel of Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Raman Kripal, and Anand Vardhan are joined by Suraj Yengde, an award winning scholar, author, and activist in the field of caste, race, and ethnicity studies and labour migration in the Global-south. Currently, he is a senior research fellow at Harvard-Kennedy School. Suraj has also been nominated for the ‘Sahitya Akademi Award’ and is a recipient of  the ‘Dr.Ambedkar Social Justice Award’ in 2019 and the ‘Rohith Vemula Scholar Award’ in 2018.  The conversation begins with discussing the reclamation of Dalit identities in pop culture. Explaining this with the rise of Chamar pop with tracks like ‘Put Han Chamara De’, Suraj says it is counterintuitive to the masculine, toxic Jat pride seen in pop-culture spaces and the embracing of Dalit identity, but not through the Brahiminical lens. ‘The way that Jat is used not just as Jat pride, but also to make other people feel low’, he adds. Suraj also talks about the discomfort around Dal

In this week’s NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Mehraj D Lone and Manisha Pande are joined by Sushanta Talukdar, editor of NEZINE, an online magazine focusing on India’s Northeast region.The discussion starts off with the Assam floods, which has affected over 28 lakh people so far. Floods are a recurring issue during the monsoons in Assam, but the government has still not found a way to contain the toll it takes. “The problem is, people forget about the Assam floods after the last day of the floods,” Sushanta says.The conversation shifts to a National Centre for Disease Control survey that said nearly 23 percent of people surveyed in Delhi had developed antibodies for the Covid infection. Manisha calls the survey heartening, since it “shows that the pandemic is not that terrible, because a lot of people survived”, though Mehraj disagrees. India’s increasing cases and low death rate has also been controversial, and Raman says he’d like to “investigate” the Covid death toll, since it’s n

In this week’s NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kripal, Mehraj D Lone, Manisha Pande and Anand Vardhan are joined by Suhasini Haider, diplomatic editor of the Hindu. The conversation kicks off with discussing how Iran dropped India from the Chabahar-Zahedan rail project. Abhinandan asks Suhasini how this might affect India. “There’s this kind of FOMO. Right now, you don’t want to be cut out of any geo-strategic game, especially when a country like China is signing a massive deal with them,” she says. She also talks about the scanty coverage of foreign policy issues in the current political climate.The discussion moves on to “cancel culture”. Has it been taken too far, or is it a “conspiracy” by boomers to call post-millennials “too soft”? In Manisha’s opinion, “Cancel culture kills innovative thoughts.” Mehraj brings up the privileges and narrowed gaze of cancel culture. He adds, “There’s no greater threat to free thought than self-censoring.” The panel also discusses whether cancel cultu

In this episode of NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone, Raman Kirpal, and Anand Vardhan are joined by two guests: Mohan Guruswamy, author and chairman-founder of the Centre for Policy Alternatives & The Guruswamy Center, and Tanmoy Goswami, the Correspondent’s sanity correspondent who writes on mental health. Among other things, the panel talks about the India-China border flare-up, and Sushant Singh Rajput’s death and how the media covered it.Mohan explains the location of the Line of Actual Control and how the India-China skirmish came about. “There are two LACs, the Chinese LAC and the Indian LAC; they overlap,” he says. Abhinandan asks him what triggered the Chinese action. Mohan speculates that alarm bells in China could have been raised by Amit Shah’s statement on recovering Aksai Chin, and India’s push for a WHO investigation into Covid-19. Mohan adds that the Chinese are “hyper-aggressive on all sectors of their borders”. Anand weighs in by pointing out the

In this week’s NL Hafta, the Newslaundry panel of Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Mehraj D Lone and Manisha Pande discuss gangster Vikas Dubey’s arrest, Jyotiraditya Scindia’s speech, and cancel culture.The discussion starts with Scindia naming former chief ministers Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh in a speech, where he reminded them that he’s still around and powerful. Talking about Scindia’s legacy, Raman says, “Scindia may become a power figure with the Centre’s help.”Moving to the arrest of Vikas Dubey for killing eight policemen, Mehraj talks about how Dubey flourished in Uttar Pradesh “because of political patronage.” (Note: This podcast was recorded before Dubey was killed.) The panel also discusses how casteism runs the police and bureaucracy in Uttar Pradesh, and how people are likely to applaud the police and chief minister Adityanath, who openly boasted about controlling crime in the state with encounters.The discussion then moves on to CBSE scrapping chapters on citizenship, nationalism and secula

In this week’s NL Hafta, the Newslaundry panel of Abhinandan Sekhri, Raman Kirpal, Mehraj D Lone, Manisha Pande and Anand Vardhan are joined by Sandhya Ravishankar, award-winning journalist and editor of the Lede. The conversation centres on police brutality in India, in the context of the custodial deaths of a father and son in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi.Sandhya talks about how the vernacular media in Tamil Nadu covered the custodial deaths of Jayaraj and Bennix from the start. Manisha and Abhinandan point out how Delhi-based news channels offered greater coverage of George Floyd than the Thoothukudi case. Describing the past record of the policemen involved in the deaths, Sandhya says that police brutality in the southern states is “as bad, if not worse, than our north Indian counterparts”, in response to Abhinandan calling some northern states “especially notorious” when it comes to police brutality. Anand says this incident is not an outlier, and that the human rights departments within some police for

In this week’s NL Hafta, the Newslaundry team of Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone and Raman Kirpal are joined by Anoo Bhuyan, a reporter with IndiaSpend currently writing on healthcare. Among other things, the panel talks about the healthcare crisis and challenges brought about by the Covid-19 outbreak, the fire in Assam’s Baghjan oil field, and two important media-related developments.Beginning with the Delhi government’s handling of the Covid crisis, Anoo discusses the perceived binary between affordable-but-bad government hospitals and good-but-expensive private hospitals, mentioning the lack of accountability in the latter. She thinks that declaring community transmission is a political call, as it has to do with the admission of failure. “To say that there is community transmission is to say that it’s not in our hands anymore,” she says.While explaining how the fire in the Baghjan oil field came about, Mehraj says: “They have been trying to douse the flames, but it will at least take a mon

In this edition of Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone and Raman Kirpal are joined by Ajai Shukla, a defence journalist, former colonel of the Indian army, and current consulting editor at Business Standard. The panel discusses the developments in and the broader implications of the India-China border flare-up, Patanjali’s Coronil debacle, and the Jagannath Rath Yatra.Ajai explains the chronology of events from April onward at the border. He says Chinese soldiers “marched into three different sectors of India and occupied a chunk of Indian territory”, measuring about 60 sq km, where they started building defences. Initial reports were either ignored or dismissed by official sources until 20 Indian soldiers were killed, he adds. The panel discusses why this episode is unique, why the government might have denied these reports, the reasons for China’s new aggression, and how this incident might affect the balance of power between India and China. “There is absolutely e

In this edition of Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, Mehraj D Lone and Raman Kirpal are joined by Ajai Shukla, a defence journalist, former colonel of the Indian army, and current consulting editor at Business Standard. Ajai explains the chronology of events from April onward at the border. He says Chinese soldiers “marched into three different sectors of India and occupied a chunk of Indian territory”, measuring about 60 sq km, where they started building defences. Initial reports were either ignored or dismissed by official sources until 20 Indian soldiers were killed, he adds. To listen to the full episode, subscribe to Newslaundry. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.