Journalism of Bias to Journalism of People

[Music]

it’s wonderful

talking to the students of hans raja i

spent some wonderful years there between

1992 and 1995.

delhi university was a real learning

experience for me although

back in the day not attending class

didn’t mean

you wouldn’t get your admit cards so i

attended very few classes

but um what i think delhi university

teaches you is

it teaches you to get on

understand and and

figure out the motivations of all sorts

of people like everyone has different

motivations and delhi university really

exposes you to that so enough about that

i’ll tell you about my journey i was

a reporter uh even when i was in my

third year of uh college and honda

i had already started working as a

researcher for news trek which was a

news magazine with vhs tapes it was a

part of the internet group

today it is a channel called india today

and aajta but back then

it was just one bulletin at night

um but right from the time i started

working in 95

to when i set up my own production house

with my friend in uh

2000 i noticed the deterioration of news

and i had a view on it that why is news

deteriorating like this

because economics that

more competition free markets means

better allocation of resources

means better product for the consumer

and there is an overall upliftment of

efficiency but that is not what we

observed in news

you did not see the evolution of the

decay of news from the 80s 90s 20 20 21.

it has been a very steady and alarming

decay

and i used to wonder what like why is

this happening

and um we figured uh that

the problem is that as you know post

liberalization there were more and more

products it was a market driven economy

um there were a lot of advertisers and

advertisers go

for eyeballs and anywhere in the world

and it’s not unique to india

big boss will have more viewers than 60

minutes

uh you know one hour news report on

something that is urgent and important

uh like you know gender sensitivity the

kind of rapes that we see in various

parts of the country

you know right to information democracy

at work we’ll have fewer viewers

than you know rakhi saw and alibindra

going at each other

and that is the nature of people and

that is fine because we want to be

entertained

so as long as news is dependent on

advertisers

i figured there is no way that it can

improve

uh because like many of you already seen

that documentary but we’ve been saying

it since 2012

that when the public pays the public is

served when advertisers pay advertisers

are served

and public is the product being served

to the advertiser

so um but the problem was

in the days of broadcast and print there

was no way because the distribution

systems

had to be through newspaper vendors

through

bookshops newspaper shops and through

channels

uh but the internet gave us an

opportunity that you could have a direct

relationship with your consumer which is

the consumer of news just like i’m

dealing with you right now

so but that is easier said than done

because there are three big challenges

one

uh is people are used to paying for

are used to getting news for free why

will they pay for it

two policy plays a big role in the

success of

any entrepreneur entrepreneurial venture

government policy can make or break an

enterprise

there is a reason certain gas

manufacturers

can do really well certain can’t

government policy is a very important

aspect and the news especially so

because news is an extremely

sensitive subject because it impacts

governments around the world

so there was the policy there was

consumer behavior there was ease of

payment

because you know there’s a two-step

authentication otp why will someone do

all that pachara to

get into you know to read news

so um there were a lot of temptations

you know when we started

increase your traffic traffic one

million cars or two million car though

put clickbaity stuff

then you will get advertising now i’ll

give you an idea when we started news

run in 2012

the cpi or cpm rate which you guys are

i don’t know if you know that’s clicks

per million or clicks per index

however you say it in the pre-roll ads

or the google ads that come

when we started on youtube it used to be

between 350 400 rupees

uh per thousand today it’s i think 12 or

15 rupees

so that logic was never going to work

you’re going to have to have

then you know the kind of newspaper

on news websites you see you know a case

of a rape the case of

you know some harassment the case of

some corruption the case of a murder

beast may check out these you know sexy

pics

put by xyz like why is that in the same

category of news

but without that you will not get the

cpi

and therefore news gets compromised so

we stuck to

our guns we said we will not uh enable

pre-roller post-roll ads we will not

take google ads

uh because positioning the product is

very important the product

if you’re trying to change consumer

behavior it’s a very daunting task

i mean if you’re trying to get people

who don’t use hair oil to use their oil

but the one thing is now that you use

hair oil and say uh

but one thing is why i don’t use you

have to tell them start using

so changing consumer behavior is

an extremely extremely daunting task

but nothing is

you know one should not look for instant

gratification and you guys are the

generation

of social media and you need instant

gratification but nothing comes that way

uh we stuck to our guns we kept

hammering the point when the public pays

the public is so

paid to keep news free when the public

pays about and that

hammering hammering hammering having

worked first we got a few hundred

subscribers then we got you know a

thousand two thousand then we

moved on to five thousand now i think we

probably have about ten thousand paying

subscribers

and these people pay for news they pay

us because they believe

our journalism is worth it you know

conventionally we are taught

we believe and it is true that freer

markets

um and more competition leads to more

efficient resource allocation and a

better product news is unique

there the opposite has happened as mock

competitors come the quality of the

product has gone down

and resource allocation now is more

about get five people in the studio get

them to shout at each other

those two hours you can monetize more

effectively

than sending someone across the country

to to really you know do a report and

mind you

you know we have reporters when they go

out sometimes they go for a story

now you know that story involves let’s

say someone who’s been

fooled or attacked or or has been the

victim of corruption there is a person

who indulged in corruption

you don’t get anyone they don’t talk to

you

now your two reporters have traveled

paid air tickets suppose they’ve gone to

kerala

whether the air you cannot be anything

from ten thousand thirty thousand stay

there three four days

probably eight days and you don’t get

the story so the risk is a lot higher

and the risk is higher but that story

even if you get the story

will have lower viewership than five

people shouting at each other in the

studio

so what is the incentive for people to

do news for the sake of public service

because news is in public interest that

is the point of news why is news called

the fourth pillar of democracy

constitution with it is because

democracy assumes that you make a choice

when you select your vote it

is an informed choice if you know

nothing who you going to choose

or if you know only lies what you want

to choose on that is why news is

considered the fourth pillar democracy

because it informs the public

and when the informed public takes an

informed decision

it is a better decision for governance

but if your public is not informed

or it is ill-informed or worse still it

is misinformed

then how will democracy function which

is why news is called the fourth pillar

of democracy and as long as news is

funded by ads

it cannot be the fourth pillar democracy

because it will always give you reality

show

and not ground reportage

and on that foundation we said we have

to get

and mind you when i went to raise funds

and i mean just on

the side i’m sure you guys have heard

this from a lot of people but it’s

completely true

there is no um like i said everybody

doesn’t have the same motivation in life

some people

you know work for money some people work

for fame some people work for

satisfaction there are all sorts of

people in the world there is no one rule

for anybody

remember um one of my favorite books uh

you know uh

adventure and screen adventures in the

screen trade written by

the screen writer of butch cassidy in

the sundance scale he says nobody knows

anything because everybody’s motivations

are different

but if you really want to make something

that is significant

money cannot be a motivation it has to

be to create something

that changes the way people use engage

or are introduced to any product or any

experience

that has to be the foundation of why

you’re doing something because there is

something broken in the system

let me fix it and then if it has to come

it will come if it doesn’t but that has

to be a motivation and when i went to

investors at that time

they said my ad model ad model no one is

going to pay for you indians are not

going to pay for news well i tell them

today my indians pay for news

and they will happily pay for news you

just have to give them a reason to

believe

that that is how news is going to grow

that is how it is going to prosper

and that is how democracy is going to

stay informed because if democracy

remains

ill-informed it will not remain a

democracy for long

um so the way to do that is

like i said try to maintain a purity of

your product whatever it be

like you know many people say why don’t

you enable google ads you know that is

you are not going down but if i do that

it will con it will confuse my consumer

videos so you keep a product clean

you keep the messaging simple and most

of all

you have to have to really put your life

your heart and passion into it

and there is no virtue in being a

startup founder

there is as much worthwhile addition

value addition that you do to the world

as a manager as someone as a job as

someone who does anything it is all the

same

i mean i go to whenever i speak at tech

colleges you know they say we all want

to be founders

you can just do as good a job as working

for somebody

if you want to be a if you want to run

your own shop

the most important thing you have to

have is an emotional resilience and

flexibility because the battery that you

it’s like

being dumped every month sometimes by an

investor

sometimes by policy sometimes by your

staff sometimes there’s someone else

and you feel defeated you feel you know

like that tree you get when you get

dumped

you know when that heart sticks to the

pinterest you get that very regularly

so if you’re not emotionally resilient

the emotional cost you will become a

horrible bitter angry person

if you uh are an entrepreneur without

the emotional resilience so the most

important part is emotional resilience

and a passion to change something

significant