The Newsroom in Our Pockets

i feel incredibly honored

and um you know to be invited to

uh speak here i wanted to be an armed

forces officer

it may come to you as news that

journalism wasn’t my first choice

career option so in 1994 i was

representing west bengal as the best ncc

cadet to republican

that i did pretty well i was declared

the second best rifle shooter i lost to

a cadet from karnataka in the tiebreaker

round and i was also shortlisted to

represent india in the prestigious

indo-canada eutectic program

that program lasted for about six to

seven months

after my return from canada i was called

for the ssb interview

because the ctsc which combined defense

service exam

conducted by upsc was accepted for me

but as luck would have it i couldn’t

make it to the ssp

and there was no second chance because

of the existing cut-off

age you know um for

officer appointments in the armed forces

i was absolutely dejected heartbroken

because i had worked hard for years

to fulfill my long cherished dreams of

wearing

the uniform adding insult to my injury

was that

most of my friends in the ncc who had

not only

managed to attend the ssbp but also

cracked it

so here i was staring into wilderness

not knowing what i should be doing for

my future

you know and being absolutely

disappointed

i used to write for various newspapers

during my college days

so i thought i should try my luck in

journalism

and that has remained the best of jokes

for my friends who often

take port shorts at my experience by

calling me accidental journalist

but i tell them that’s not how i view my

career option

i think journalism was the closest

alternative to our forces

in my ability to serve public

and those values would hold so true many

many years later

when i was launching jantaka reporter as

an escape room

you know um uh from the so-called

mainstream media which had earned the

notoriety

uh for its flawed and uh you know

distorted news and had become a platform

which of

broadcast bias news the need to launch

the jantarka reporter

uh had become imminent in 2015

in light of spectacular demise of

integrity

and credibility in the so-called

mainstream media tv channels in

particular

but the question arose as to why we

because there existed there already

existed so many digital platforms

but there was one difference those

digital platforms did not have the

advantage that i carried

myself and that advantage of having

worked

in the world’s greatest newsroom at

fairly top level and that is the bbc

my years of association with the bbc had

a profound impact

on my news gathering april’s and that’s

precisely why

i found myself to be a misfit in the

indian tv

ecosystem i mean not many of you

of you would know that my stint with the

indian tv industry

lasted for just seven months i was out

of

the industry and since then i haven’t

been able to reconcile with the fact

that i could ever be a part of it again

you only have to cast your mind back on

certain uh

examples uh from the past to understand

what

working for the bbc means

simply put bbc is the version of

uk with the government of the day

being the pay master of the media

organization

but its editorial independence

has been an envy for media media outlets

globally

the bbc has often fought tooth and nail

by the way

i mean that editorial independence

hasn’t come naturally

bbc had to fight tooth and nail you know

with the government of the day to

preserve

its editorial freedom because mind you

you know the ruling party has often

tried

to manipulate the bbc’s coverage in its

favor

one such watershed moment came in 2004

that was immediately

uh in the aftermath of the allied forces

attacking iraq under saddams and regime

if you remember um tony miller had made

a passionate speech in british

parliament saying that how

uk was just 45 minutes away from being

bombed by saddam hussein

and he has cited the stopping of weapons

of mass destruction

in iran somewhere

in january 2004 we broke a news our

defense correspondent andrew gilligan we

broke a news

that tony blair had effectively lied to

the parliament and the word was

that he had sexed up the dossiers on

weapons of mass destruction

our report was based on an unnamed

scientist

now we had not revealed the identity of

the scientist

but soon after we broadcast that expose

it the

spin doctors have turned down the they

blew the cover of the scientists to be

that of david kelly

now david kelly was an eminent weapon

inspector who had served in iraq

um um on behalf of him to assess whether

saddam hussein

indeed stopped by the difference of mass

destruction and chemical weapons

now what happened is that as soon as his

cover was blown

by the spin doctors often downing street

david killed his dead body found from a

field near his house

that stunned the british public

now it was an embarrassment for the tony

blair government

tony blair started exerting pressure on

the then director general of the bbc

great guy to samuel gilligan the author

of that report

greg dykes said refused to do that

instead

greg died chose to resign what that

episode

did was to create precedent

whereby no future government in the uk

would be able to arm twist bbc bosses

to you know compromise uh our coverage

in their favor or every time they found

our coverage

uncomfortable they should be able to

pressurize us

just imagine if they believe if if the

bbc director general had indeed

succumbed to tonight’s pressure and

sacked

our defense correspondent that would

have created a very

very dangerous precedent for the future

government every time they found

our coverage uncomfortable they would

have repeated the same

as shameful incidents again so

that was one example another example

again during

iraq war i was working with bbc service

i was made in charge of the night

coverage for our service

now within uh you know like first few

days

i started receiving uh some strange

calls from a lady who claimed to be

working in kendaman street

and essentially she wanted me to tone

down our coverage in favor of the

government

mind you uh uk had just joined allied

forces you know

to bomb iraq and they they had already

faced a lot of criticism

uh during the afghanistan world couple

of years ago and there was a huge

protest in uk

in fact 2003 uh saw at least

one million march that the famous one

million mark whereby at least one

million people from around the uk

they gathered in the hearts of london so

the war in iraq was already

very very unpopular so i started

receiving this cause and the lady wanted

me to tone down i wasn’t prepared to do

that

but i wasn’t you know higher enough in

the editorial hierarchy

to ask her to literally bugger off so i

asked my editor and who not only agreed

with me he said look

i will follow our conversation with an

email so that you are covered

if in the event that there are any

reprisals or consequences for your

action

you know you know that you can always

blame so next evening again the same

call came

and i literally asked the lady to bugger

off

strangely enough there was no call after

that

and even strangely enough there were no

consequences of me

that’s the bbc not only i remain the

part of bbc for the next 10 years

i continue to grow in the organization

this is what working for the bbc means

for you so when i was trying to launch

the reporter with the bbc values you

know um

behind it you know it was an auditious

attempt

audacious because here i was trying to

create a digital platform

which would take on the might of indian

media

thinking big has always been a part of

my um you know who i am

i’ll share a couple of more examples

here so in 1998 if you remember

uh amateur saint won the nobel prize for

welfare economy

now soon after he won the coveted prize

he had to calculate his own city

i used to work for a max news magazine

which wasn’t even published which wasn’t

even

launched and amanda said was the person

that who every journalist working for

newspapers

and tv channels wanted to interview so

what were the chances of

i working for a magazine which wasn’t

even our

you know succeeding in securing an

exclusive interview

with amateur same against the likes of

those big names working for

established newspapers and tv channels

but i called him nonetheless and even

managed to secure a time slot for myself

but again as luck would have it because

i always believe that things don’t come

to me very easily

so next morning when i arrived in

kolkata

i found mr sale in the lobby

only to be told that the time slot given

to me had been taken

uh by prominent politicians who he

couldn’t say no to

he said i’m sorry as he walked past the

conference room to attend the seminar

with shuttle to speak

i was disappointed but i wasn’t prepared

to give up yet

i think it was month of ramadan i was

fasting i used to look

very skinny fellow i mean i used to look

so miserable that

most of the politicians just take pity

and give me

and it was month of ramadan and i was

fasting so i decided to wait in the lord

i waited for not just for one hour two

hours or several hours

until i saw mr sen coming out of the

conference room

he looked at me and said i told you i

can’t give you an interview

and i told him sir i’m fasting

that appeared to do the trick in my

favor suddenly

mr uh says voice or his stone became

sympathetic to me and he said

you will die and come with me i’ll talk

to you for 10 minutes

and i knew that i had just secured an

interview for at least half an hour

because of the talkative person that he

was

that was one example and by the way that

interview

would be the only exclusive interview

who he wrote to any journalist

during his that trip to calcutta on

another occasion

when i was in college i used to write

for various newspapers

um i think it was in 1992 uh

india were playing england uh in atlanta

gardens

were being led by muhammad azeru who was

the most sought after indian cricket

captain

i dialed into his room seeking um an

exclusive interview

he came on the phone he spoke he didn’t

grant me the interview

many many years later playing uh against

azerutin’s

team in a cricket match between

journalists and parliamentarians

i reminded him about that incident of

course he didn’t remember

but he smiled at my audacity nonetheless

i may not have succeeded in getting

despite my audacity you know from

azeruti but my you know that uh

ability to think big and i know do big

um paid me off many years later in 2004

i was asked to cover athens olympic

behalf of the bbc

i was reporting in four different

languages hindi urdu bengali and english

writing for various platforms and doing

my daily

uh slot at bbc world tv that earned me

an olympic medal i’m perhaps the only

few

journalists who is and not only an

olympian but olympic medal here is the

medal that i was given to be

it was given to me by jack rocca the

then ioc

so you know thinking big pays you off

you know so i have always believed that

you should think big now coming back to

the indian media landscape

indian media landscape has gone

undergone a sea change in the last 60

seconds

gone are the days when people are solely

relying on tv channels to conceive their

news

because the digital platforms have

become incredibly powerful

and testament to that is the success of

japan reporting

now mind you gentile reporter i’ll come

to the bus but

you have to understand that reporter is

run by

just three and a half people and i said

three and a half people because that

point five percent is my

clinical psychologist wife who often

doubles up to be a journalist

whenever we are faced with the challenge

breaking news

and she’s never tired of thanking me for

her successful transformation

from a clinical psychologist to a

budding digital media journalist

today i mean uh in 2019 we were

shortlisted as one of the 10 most

disruptive

child news platforms in 2020 our monthly

uh we crossed 1.3 crore mark

so in a sense our monthly page views

exceeded more than 1.3 crore

with our monthly user base being between

50 to 60 likely

five to six million and that is the

outcome

of the collective effort of just 3.5

people

my only gripe is that we are not doing

enough

you know because of capacity of

resources imagine if we had bit more

resources you know how much impact can

we create

because i think the role of um

independent media

credible media who is you know

presenting

uh uh facts to you in an undiluted way

without any fear of consequences i think

it’s utterly important for

a demon functional democracy any

functional democracy

there’s another change that i have

noticed in the last um

let’s say one and a half years and that

change is more profound

than digital platforms getting uh in

attraction

what is that change the change is that

more and more tv journalists

are tweeting the established jobs to be

independent youtubers

i know at least one journalist who

launched

his youtube youtube channel just before

the long term last night and within a

year he has been able to amass

more than one million subscribers what

that means

is that he may be earning several lakhs

of rupees every month

the reason why i am emphasizing on the

monetary income is the fact that in the

past if you spoke to tv journalists

asking why do you want to be a part of

this system

they will tell you we have to run family

you know we have to pay emis

you know how can we leave the job i

think the success of these journalists

as an independent uh reporters on

youtube

is going to pave the way for other

journalists from tv channels

you know to emulate their success

so i think these two uh incidents are

absolutely profound and also

their success is largely been possible

because of the uh

strong mobile penetration coupled with

cheap data

availability of cheap data and also um

you know

the connectivity the good connectivity

so now a journalist can report from any

far from

areas in india you know in a timeliness

manner and likewise

a consumer which is the news consuming

public can access news

you know without much hindrance so these

two changes

are going to have to follow in fact

impact on the indian media

in general in time to come so i remain

incredibly

um optimistic about the future the media

but also very proud of the fact that i

was able to create

chat reporter as an escape room from uh

the blood curdling yelling

you know that happens in the tv

newsrooms in the in the name of

journalism these days

so on that note i would like to thank

you again god bless you all

stay safe