Media Misworks

https://thewire.in/media/young-india-angry-at-mainstream-media-student-movement 

As many TV bulletins have told their viewers: there was no COVID crisis, there was no emergent learning crisis – most Indian schools were closed for nearly two years, despite clear evidence showing most children could not access online learning and there is today no jobs crisis as young students stumble from a failed education system to a broken testing mechanism into a hollowed-out employment market.

The news media, in this case particularly so India’s TV broadcasters, will have to answer with honesty how much air time has been spent in the last decade reporting on any of these issues. It is not surprising that across all age groups in India, more than half say they avoid the news sometimes or often.

Between January 2012 and February 2024, there were 805 government-imposed internet shutdowns across India, resulting in the highest number of internet blocks in the world so far.  In 2025, India imposed 65 internet shutdowns; still amongst the top nations globally in enforcing the most internet shutdown. If dissent and criticism has been visible, it is clear from the number of blackouts where that has been – not on television news channels, but on the fast flowing, ever-changing internet.

What does today’s news say about my life and my needs, a young Indian may ask. What, indeed?

by Mitali Mukherjee

23/07/2026

on channels like NDTV, you have Puri defending himself to news anchor Padmaja Joshi and somehow blaming Rahul Gandhi for even bringing up the subject. And then you have the most unedifying spectacle of the same NDTV anchor Padmaja Joshi arguing with people on her panel that while Epstein was a paedophile, his primary job was of a power broker. The Big Indian Media's Reaction to the Epstein File Revelations Demonstrates How Low it Has Fallen - The Wire 

Nothing demonstrates how low the Indian media has fallen that this sort of parcelling of the scandal that is currently rocking the world. At no level, can the bulk of the media ask questions or hold those in power to account. Because, even if you take the media as the basest level of human existence, a story like the Epstein one must excite all journalists. It is salacious at all levels, involves crime and power and involves the world. 

And it is a sad lesson in patriarchy that these channels use women to push their propaganda agenda, to the extent of excusing child sex abuse.

by Ranjona Banerji

14/02/2026

It is time for the media to shut the door on conspiracy theorists and irresponsible experts. Let us not do to AI-171 what was done to the Sushant Singh Rajput case.

https://thewire.in/media/reckless-speculative-commentary-after-air-disasters-harms-public-safety 

In his first article on June 18 (six days after the crash), Capt Ranganathan wrote about TRP-hungry media channels and YouTubers who were “going overboard with theories about what caused the accident”. He should introspect if his opinion assuaged or compounded the general anxiety. He complained about rumours that are “flooding WhatsApp groups” and why “Boeing needs to address them” given the high stakes and “reliability of the Dreamliner”. It is not known on what basis he has given a clean chit to the Boeing Company so early in the process. His further writings only reveal a confirmation bias against the pilots who are no longer around to defend themselves.

Investigations into AI-171 will have to deal with many knowns and unknowns. It is best that commentators do not reduce it to the simplistic denomination of pilot error (a term replaced by human error for many years now). Also, topics like mental health and its role in the cockpit are far too serious to be casually bandied about without evidence, however seized by cognitive bias one may be. Let us not do to AI-171 what the media did to the Sushant Singh Rajput case.

by K.P. Sanjeev Kumar

21/07/2025

Nine Years of Taking Aim at Umar Khalid, Media Style https://thewire.in/media/backstory-nine-years-of-taking-aim-at-umar-khalid-media-style/ 
Pamela Philipose   long before the passage of the Constitutional Amendment Act, 2019, and the outrage it provoked, particularly among young Muslims, Big Media had already marked him out as someone who stood for everything to which the Hindutva right-wing and the media they controlled was viscerally opposed...  Umar tried to argue that hanging Afzal Guru violated the norms of a democratic state and that the ‘India ka barabdi’ slogan was not put out by JNU students. But Goswami was having none of that: the programme ended with Umar being labeled as “anti-national” and “India-hating”.

Before long, doctored video footage showing him actually shouting slogans like ‘Bharat tere tukde honge’ appeared on Zee News ....

 Arnab Goswami – now proprietor of Republic Television – brought out in October 22, the ‘Full Tukde Gang Files’.  A quick perusal of this material tells you not just how horrifyingly insidious was the campaign against Umar Khalid – he was now named “mastermind of the Delhi violence” – but how closely television channels had come to work with the Delhi Police and buttress its narrative. 
Pamela Philipose