An interview with Ravish Kumar | The Listening Post

India is creeping closer to a general election next year at a time that the mainstream news media there are growing more and more toxic that assessment comes from one of the country's most prominent journalists ravish Kumar and Kumar would know he spent nearly 30 years in the studios of NDTV and national news channel that stuck to a Centrist line while other channels were veering to the right either willingly or under pressure from the government of Narendra Modi and his party the BJP here at the listening post we have documented that shift TV hosts getting louder more sycophantic more anti-muslim by the day effectively proving ravish Kumar's point Kumar is the subject of a new documentary about the state of India's media it's called while we watched it Chronicles his last years at NDTV just before a controlling stake at the channel was bought by a Modi aligned businessman for Kumar that takeover was the last straw he quit the channel and this is how he explained that decision to his viewers on his way out the door is foreign ravish Kumar joins us now ravish you do your work in Hindi you're also good in English we've agreed we're going to go back and forth between those languages as you see fit let me start here last year that businessman go tamadani bought a controlling stake in the network you were working at NDTV you make a decision to go out the door that you can no longer work there under these conditions given what you've seen on that channel since then did you make the right call thanks Richard for having me here and thanks for having a show uh like the listening post where you analyze media from across the globe my decision to leave NDTV was not based on guts only foreign [Music] foreign for people who are unfamiliar with the Indian media space characters like arnab goswami we've seen him get into an argument with a student leader declare as though he's issuing a certificate of some kind that this guy is an anti-national someone's going to call your bluff and we are calling your bluff tonight someone's going to name you as anti-national and I'm naming you as anti-national tonight shortly thereafter someone takes a shot at that student leader yeah who gave these anchor people the power whether it's real or imagined in their heads to do this kind of thing who invested them with that power is institutions foreign [Music] [Music] foreign are saying the government's quiet part out loud yeah yeah so members of the prime minister's party the BJP and those who support the party take issue with your journalism they say that everything's bad in your eyes that you ignore any stories of progress or positivity in India uh is there any legitimacy to that criticism are you guilty of being hyper focused this is a false narrative and this uh they apply this narrative against anyone not only me my job is to ask question especially when prime minister goes and invites some film star to give a scripted kind of interview if you wanted to say that you have done so much you should not have invited Akshay Kumar you should have invited ravish Kumar then my questions would have given you a chance to say that you have done so much for this country you're now doing your thing on YouTube you're no longer with the mainstream yeah you're gonna do okay but when voices like yours are basically taking Refuge online when that stuff ends up on on YouTube or social media is it ever going to reach enough people or will you always be dwarfed by hundreds of news channels yes also there is a huge gap of resource we do not have resources we I do not have reporters to send them in the field and get things verified so I am relied on uh secondary sources but I know that uh this is not enough and in compared to this scale of media so is that is that almost like a declaration of defeat no in the form of surrender no this is not a declaration of defeat but I have to say uh what is the real situation and if I have declared defeat I would not have been working uh and putting a video every day every other day but yes I do miss television and Richard when I walked in to this studio uh I got little emotional it's pretty nice it's pretty nice yeah and I felt like oh my God I'm back the soul is coming back to my body let me um let me ask you this so India is about to go through another general election soon Narendra Modi will be running for a third term with his ratings being as high as they are with him having all those news organizations in his corn how do you see the outcome of this election is it a foregone conclusion will it even be a contest I'm not sure about result I cannot pronounce the result before election held but I'm concerned about fairness of Elections means foreign [Music] but I have an idea for this ministry media I want to appeal to BJP please merge this ministry media with their fold and like you have many subsidies subsidiaries in your organization like women's front Traders front and youth front you just have media frontals you're saying yeah make it efficient yeah make it official and much this media with BJP I do not think uh see that anyone has a resource and capacity to change this mainstream media we have to create a a new kind of mainstream media if if we think that media is a necessary companion of any good and sober democracy Richard oh especially a democracy that calls itself the world's largest democracy yes ravish Kumar it's been a pleasure we wish you the best of luck on YouTube uh with your journalism in the future thank you Richard thank you

Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 1,423,827

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Id: d1B5V0KUFQQ

Length: 11min 16sec (676 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 08 2023