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