NL Hafta

In this episode of Reporters Without Orders, Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava, award-winning journalist and contributing editor at Business Standard, joins the in-house gang of Gaurav Sarkar, Prateek Goyal, Ayush Tiwari and Cherry Agarwal. The panel discusses the chargesheet filed by the Delhi police against the former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar and nine others. They also discuss the challenges of beat reporting, the presser on EVM hacking, media’s coverage of land conflicts and more. Ayush begins the discussion by talking about the under-reportage of “Operation Lotus” in Karnataka. Gaurav adds, “Maybe one of the reasons it has been under-reported is also because Karnataka has been in shambles ever since the elections started...Maybe from an editorial point of view, it doesn’t hold water because it has been happening for quite some time.” Speaking about media’s coverage of #JNUSeditionCase, Gaurav dubbed media’s coverage as “over-the-top”. Cherry disagreed. “Sedition is a law that needs a lot of discussions—if someone is being slapped with sedition, it does deserve prime-time coverage,” she said. In this particular case, “the charge sheet is being filed after three years, the delay itself should have the journalists questioning what’s happening,” she added. Sambhav discussed the media’s reportage of the new agricultural package. He said, “There was so much anticipation that the government has come up with something extraordinary on farmer’s distress...but I could see journalists not being as critical about examining what exactly that package means for business economics and farmers...the reporting was also very superficial.” To which, Cherry asked, “Is it because newsrooms lack expertise?” It is rather due to a paucity of time, Sambhav explained. “When it comes to issues (sic) such as these, reporters need to spend time on deciphering the information, many reporters don’t get to do this. That’s the unfortunate part of how media functions,” he said. Prateek joins the discussion to talk about the excesses of security forces in Chhatisgarh’s Korseguda. He also speaks about why it is challenging for the media to cover such regions. For all this and more, listen up!