Journalism
#4: A different way to think about Indian media
Is the Indian media broken beyond repair? Or is it thriving as feisty regional and independent outlets report truth to power? The answer lies not in the specifics but the larger systems.
Turning politics into theatre
Tweets by an international pop star [https://twitter.com/rihanna/status/1356625889602199552]—five words, one hashtag, a linked article—and a teenage climate activist [https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1356694884615340037] on India's farmer protests have rattled thin-skinned Indians. What an irony: A citizenry perennially subjected to state-sponsored propaganda
Journalists refer to themselves as storytellers. Is that a mistake?
"Facts come in the way of beautiful prose," a colleague at the Wall Street Journal told me during my 2018 fellowship at the newspaper. It stayed with me. Every time I ponder over the limitations of journalistic methods to understand the world, I think about it. Especially in
Thoughts and observations on data journalism in India
Today, I complete five years in journalism: one year at The Hindu (my first job, straight out of university), two years at the Hindustan Times—which overlapped with a five-month fellowship at the Wall Street Journal—and two years as a freelancer. 'Data journalist' was my official job
Why the event-oriented structure of news doesn't help in understanding how the world works
In 2020, I significantly reduced the proportion of daily news consumption in my information diet. And I strongly recommend the same to others: less of news and more of books. There are many reasons why, and I will list them in a future post. Here is one compelling argument from
How interlinked economic and political forces create self-censorship in Indian media
Most contemporary discussions on press freedom begin with some sort of rankings: X country slipped Y positions on Z index—that’s evidence something wrong is happening. This makes headlines every year in India, as we continue to slip down in these indices. Criminal defamation cases are filed against journalists
Indian Govt Trots Out Meaningless Data As COVID-19 Cases Rocket Despite Lockdown
The Indian government is using incomplete national-level data to justify arbitrary policy decisions, defend its record, and underplay the extent of the COVID-19 crisis.
Why India is falling behind in the Y2Q race
Encryption forms the backbone of secure cyberspace. It helps to protect the data we send, receive or store. Behind the high degree of confidence in the security of the most commonly used encryption algorithms, like RSA, lies an assumption: modern computers, including the fastest supercomputers, will take forever to factor
India’s proposed data protection act, explained
India’s parliamentarians must deliberate on the shortcomings of this bill. And if they want to empower individuals, they need to cede some of their own powers
India’s fake news challenge
Many of India’s misinformation campaigns are developed and run by political parties with nationwide cyberarmies.
