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