Newslaundry Podcast

In this week’s podcast, our regular Hafta gang of Abhinandan Sekri, Madhu Trehan, Manisha Pande and Raman Kirpal are joined by Newslaundry subscriber Anushka Shah who is a researcher with MIT Media Lab. The podcast kicks off with a discussion on the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. The team talks about how even today, media coverage of communal riots has been limited to political whataboutery where journalists only cover how a political party accuses the other. Anushka points out that in the last two years, the 1984 riots has been covered twice as much as 2002 Gujarat riots.They talk about the Delhi High Court’s judgement convicting Congress politician Sajjan Kumar for his role in the riots. Madhu says journalists should focus on writing descriptive accounts of court proceedings instead of limiting reports to the final court judgement.Moving on, Abhinandan mentions how political parties offer farm loan waivers to please their voters. Manisha says loan waivers are only a short-term