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Hafta 301: Arnab Goswami’s arrest, France and Vienna attacks, and the Bihar Assembly election
Timestamps
03:16 - Headlines
05:31 - Bihar election
40:48 - Arnab Goswami arrested by Mumbai police
01:03:56 - France and Vienna attacks
01:04:48 - Subscriber mails
01:06:16 - France And Vienna attacks
01:10:17 - Recommendations
01:11:13 - Subscriber mails
01:12:46 - France and Vienna attacks
01:35:43 - Subscriber mails
01:57:39 - US presidential election
02:00:48 - Recommendations
This week on NL Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, and Mehraj Lone are joined by Arfa Khanum, senior editor at the Wire.
Starting off with the Bihar Assembly election, Arfa talks about Tejashwi Yadav’s “baggage”, being the son of Lalu Prasad Yadav. Manisha says Bihar was no “paradise” under Lalu, and Mehraj agrees. The panel discusses the coverage and optics of leaders from both marginalised and dominant communities.
On the arrest of Republic’s Arnab Goswami, Abhinandan says the “overpowering support” Goswami received from politicians is a first. Mehraj says the case has been made into a freedom of the press issue, instead of a criminal case. The police has been a “tool of politics”, Manisha says, but it’s not a question of press freedom. “Arnab is a politician, not a journalist,” Arfa says.
On the attacks in France and Vienna after a French schoolteacher was beheaded for showing his students cartoons of Prophet Mohammad, Arfa calls it a “complex issue”. Discussing notions of xenophobia, Mehraj says France’s laws are “vague”. Abhinandan says, “The real-life consequences of lives being lost in the name of religion need to be considered.”
Manisha points out the historical distaste for religion that’s part of France’s culture. Discussing the politics of terrorism, Abhinandan brings out the nuances of situational violence, and says the focus should be on “assimilation”, since religion becomes a “comfort zone”.
The discussion also spans the US presidential election, Glenn Greenwald leaving the Intercept, the Sushant Singh Rajput case, and a lot more. Tune in!
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