Newslaundry Interviews

These are some of the biggest trends – and challenges – facing the news ecosystem today, impacting India in new and unique ways. And this was the focus of a discussion organised around the launch of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report for 2025, a comprehensive study of news consumption worldwide. 

Moderated by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s director Mitali Mukherjee, the panel comprised Nic Newman, senior research associate at the institute; Sannuta Raghu, journalism fellow at the institute and head of the AI Lab at Scroll; Ritvvij Parrikh, head of AI product at Times Internet; and Akash Banerjee, founder and host of The Deshbhakt. 

According to the report, 55 percent of Indian users now consume news on YouTube, and 44 percent share news via social, messaging or email often via WhatsApp. Akash says there’s a clear indication towards television “taking a bit of a beating” while social media sees a “steady uptick”. 

“You’ve got to be real and raw,” he says, and explains how consumption patterns are moving towards “snackable, biteable content”, where a shorter format is “much, much more prevalent than the longer format”. 

Ritvvij talks about the challenges in using large language models that can sometimes “miss the news peg” of a story and therefore the need to deal with “detecting hallucinations”. He adds, “Trust in news is eroding and not just because of bad actors, but also because of opaque algorithms.”

Sannuta breaks down how AI can help news organisations “stay relevant” in some ways, converting text articles into videos that can be shared on Instagram. “The idea was…there are over 600 million smartphone users in India with access to cheap internet,” she says. She also explains the logistics of dealing with producing news in different languages in a country as diverse as India. 

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The New Delhi assembly constituency is witnessing a fierce triangular poll contest. Sandeep Dikshit, former East Delhi MP and son of former chief minister Sheila Dikshit, is the Congress’s candidate against AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and BJP leader Parvesh Verma.

In a conversation with Atul Chaurasia at his home, the Congress leader says that most voters in the constituency remember the development work carried out by Sheila Dikshit. “There is not a single colony which does not cite development carried out by Sheila Dikshit.” But asked about why his party is using Sheila Dikshit’s record to seek votes, he says the campaign is yet to be launched in its full scale. 

At the same time, the former MP admits he is unaware of what the people in-charge of the campaign in Delhi are planning. “We will use our legacy but in today’s context…those who plan this will have a better idea.” He also accepts lapses in the party’s organisational strength and addresses questions about why the Congress is not perceived as contesting the election like a single unit.

On freebies promised by the AAP, Dikshit terms it a “syndrome”. “You have made this syndrome that the voter will always want something free. You made politics a competition for freebies, not development…you made the government feudal.”

“There is a difference between welfare and what the prime minister called as revdis. Welfare has a social, economic and humanitarian logic. It targets a larger population,” the former MP says, referring to the AAP government’s power subsidy as “muftkhori”. He says the power subsidy should have addressed the concerns of small business owners instead of using a single slab for commercial setups.

On the allegation that Dikshit’s attacks against the AAP come because he nurses a grudge, he says, “The bitterness I have against the AAP’s policies is the same as that against the BJP. It is not personal.”

He also talks about allegations of manipulation of voter lists.

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“It is not only democracy that is on the ballot... but the realisation that we have a dictator in the making if we were to give Trump a second presidency,” says Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar in an exclusive conversation with Sreenivasan Jain. 

On the high stakes in the elections, the prominent Muslim politician says that rights and liberties, “bodily autonomy,” policies like student debt cancellation, and the progress made us over the years will “under threat” if Trump comes to power. 

Speaking about Kamala Harris’s candidacy, Omar says Gaza is a “huge blindspot” of the Biden government. “I have called on the president to impose an arms emargo… I do believe US laws and international laws are being violated. There is an ongoing genocide.”

On the challenges facing Kamala Harris, Omar says “most people don’t know who the Vice President is”.  She also talks about Harris’s policies, challenges, and the consequences of the media’s “lost journalistic ethos”.  

Watch our mini-series on the US polls

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In this episode of Another Election Show, Manisha Pande and Atul Chaurasia reached Jammu to understand the issues of the locals, particularly the youth, ahead of the third phase of polling in Jammu and Kashmir. 

Following the recent delimitation process, the region has a total of 90 electoral seats – 43 in Jammu and 47 in Kashmir. the voting in three phases, with the final phase set to cover 40 seats simultaneously.

At Jammu University, we spoke to the students about their key issues, the region’s politics, and campus life. For most of them, employment, development and reservation were the main poll issues and not the abrogation of Article 370.

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The politics of Jammu have been distinct from that of Kashmir. To grasp the nuances of this difference and the issues in Jammu, Manisha Pande and Atul Chaurasia spoke to the region’s senior journalists – Mohit Kandhari of The Pioneer and Nishikant Khajuria of Daily Excelsio.    

In this episode of Another Election Show, the conversations shed light on the influence of the various political parties in Jammu and the people’s views on the abrogation of Article 370 and statehood. 

On Article 370, Kandhari said, “People have voted in large numbers in the valley, which shows that democracy is taking its place here.” The journalists also delved into the BJP’s election strategy and the other parties’ initiatives to win electoral support.  

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जम्मू कश्मीर में करीब 10 साल बाद चुनाव होने जा रहे हैं. यहां मुख्यधारा की लगभग सारी पार्टियां जैसे-नेशनल कॉन्फ्रेन्स, पीडीपी, कांग्रेस और बीजेपी चुनावी मैदान में हैं. इसके अलावा ऐसी पार्टियां भी चुनावी मैदान में हैं जिनपर अलगाववाद और ‘आज़ादी’ के नारे लगाने का आरोप है. इन्हीं पार्टियों में से एक पार्टी है शेख राशिद इंजीनियर की आवामी इत्तेहाद पार्टी और दूसरी है जमात-ए-इस्लामी.जमात -ए-इस्लामी अतीत में हथियार के बल पर ‘आजादी की वकालत’ करती रही है. जिसके चलते जमात-ए-इस्लामी पर भारत सरकार ने प्रतिबंध लगा रखा है. वहीं, इस पार्टी के कई नेता जेल में बंद हैं और उनके सारे उम्मीदवार निर्दलीय चुनाव लड़ रहे हैं. उन्हीं में से एक हैं तलत मजीद, जो पुलवामा से निर्दलीय चुनाव लड़ रहे हैं. उन्हें चुनाव आयोग की ओर से टॉर्च का चुनाव निशान मिला है. 

जमात-ए-इस्लामी ने अतीत में अलगाववाद की बात की है और अब वह भारतीय संविधान के तहत चुनाव लड़ रही है. ऐसे में हथियारों के बल पर आजादी से जम्हूरियत के रास्ते राजनीति का यह सफर कैसे हुआ? और कश्मीरी आवाम को वह अब क्या कहकर अपने पक्ष में जुटाते हैं? इन्हीं सब मुद्दों पर हमने तलत मजीद से बात की. 

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The census has been postponed five times over the past four years – initially due to the Covid-19 pandemic and later even without citing any reason. Last year, the home ministry deferred it to October 2024. But skepticism persists as the allocated budget of Rs 1,300 crore is significantly lower than the Rs 12,600 crore promised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2019.

In this conversation with Newslaundry, former registrar general and census commissioner AR Nanda sheds light on the impact of the delay in the census, the linkage of the National Population Register with the census, past practices, and the government’s alleged interference in the exercise. 

Nanda says, “We have brilliant officers [in charge of census] and they have technical support, but, unfortunately, none of them, including the present one, have field experience in conducting the census on the field…Field experience is important because it is a massive exercise” involving elaborate government machinery.   

He says that the census is a “valuable” exercise and the delay has particularly impacted the beneficiaries of the government welfare schemes because of the lack of data for over 14 years. “The coverage is not known. It is all tentatively being calculated, which cannot match the census data.”   

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It will soon be a year since Hamas’ October 7 attack. Contribute to our new NL Sena project to help us bring an exclusive mini-series that examines the multiple dimensions of the Israel-Gaza war from ground zero.

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What started as a mass student protest against job quotas escalated into a deadly uprising in Bangladesh, with over 150 people killed so far.

Muktadir Rashid, a journalist in Bangladesh who has been reporting on the clashes from the ground, speaks to Newslaundry about the challenges to reporting in such circumstances, the incident in which he was shot at, how two journalists were killed, and the struggle for media in Bangladesh to be independent.

Rashid also discusses the triggers behind the protests, and how it’s become one of the biggest challenges Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has faced in her two-decade tenure. 

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After the spate of allegations against IAS probationer Puja Khedkar, last week the UPSC said she had misused the disability quota and filed a case against her. But this changed the course of the conversation, with several bureaucrats raising questions on the need for the quota. 

Arman Ali, executive director of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People, spoke to Newslaundry about why putting the blame on people with disability is a harmful narrative and would result in pushing back people of disability by decades.

Ali also spoke about a case he recently filed against prominent cricketers for allegedly mocking people of disability and the need to include disability in mainstream conversations.

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Nearly a year after violence broke out during the Brij Mandal religious yatra in Haryana’s Nuh, killing at least six people, preparations are underway for another yatra on July 22. And Bittu Bajrangi, cow vigilante and key accused of last year’s violence, has claimed to lead the procession this year.     

Bajrangi, who was arrested by the Haryana police last year and subsequently granted bail, told Newslaundry that he is set to lead the yatra. He has also been urging people to participate in the yatra in huge numbers. 

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