May 13, 2013 was a day of many firsts. Before we delve any further, though, I have a disclosure of my own to make: I am a permanent member (at least till now) of the ever-increasing tribe which is the Ravish Kumar Fan Club. Back to May 13, 2013. I’d tuned in to primetime TV. It was the first time that Pakistan was witnessing the transition of power from one democratically elected government to another.

It was also another first – at least for Indian television news (unless it has happened before and I haven’t noticed, then I want to be corrected and celebrate that occasion too). Ravish Kumar began his show with the mutation of a lion into a powerless teddy – since the metaphor the same holds for Pakistani election results. But before he introduced his panel, he listed out all his references, sources, articles and columns that he had referred to while preparing for the show. As he read out the list and encouraged the audience to do the same, it sounded like rigorous academic bibliography:

1. Praveen Swami in Firstpost.com
2. Mini Kapoor in The Indian Express
3. Vinod Sharma in Hindustan Times
4. Anita Joshua in The Hindu
5. Barkha Dutt in NDTV 24X7
6. Ayesha Siddiqa in The Hindu and Tehelka

Ayesha Siddiqa was also one of his panellists on the programme. So, what’s the big deal in naming all the people he’d used for research? After all, Sagarika Ghosh conducted an entire Face the Nation episode based on Anjali Doshi’s Wisden piece on sexism in IPL and had Sharda Ugra as co-panellist, and Vikram Chandra got Krishn Kaushik to Big Fight because of his Caravan Cover Story – so, what was the novelty factor in Ravish’s utterances?

Well to begin with, he listed all his sources. He has mentioned his sources earlier too. During the FDI retail debates, he read up Sukhpal Singh’s pieces in Economic and Political Weekly, got Mr Singh to the studio and exhorted the audience to read him too. But this time, he hadn’t got all his source authors to the studio and it’s important to note that one of them was from a rival news network. Yet, that didn’t stop him from taking his name or acknowledging his contribution to his research.

How come we don’t get to hear that from other celebrity anchors, Hindi or English news casters included, (even our public broadcaster Doordarshan)? Do our anchors really think that, we – the audience – think their anchor leads and their questions are their own or their research team’s original work? Why don’t they disclose, who or what they are reading? Who or what is influencing the nature and content of these prime time debates every night? Or if they aren’t reading anyone and these are just informed opinions they are formulating, thanks to their privileged status, and South Delhi/ Mumbai locations, we still need to know.

In fact, Rajdeep Sardesai, in his famous one-on-one with Neeraj Kumar, rolled out crimes-against-women statistics, as if they were CNN-IBN’s original research. Neeraj Kumar gave the perfect come-back that those numbers were narrated by Kumar himself at the press conference held by Delhi Police. This was mentioned in Clothesline as well. Had Rajdeep bothered to check those figures were police hand-outs, he would have added a disclaimer that those numbers were conservative and deflated, as we all know police crime reportage is.

There’s something way more important to note here, by sharing the sources diligently, Ravish also encouraged us to do our own readings. For any interested strategic affairs’ student or US Af-Pak policy researcher or globalist who is bored with India’s (read big/numeric supremacist countries) navel gazing, this source-listing came in handy.

Of import is also the sharing of sources with a hinterland audience and small town India. Having been born and raised in one myself (Cuttack, Odisha) and now working in the boondocks of East Africa and South Asia, we are all aware of the myth-making, untruth peddling that goes on. The digital divide is still a reality on both sides of the Indian Ocean and beyond, and many newspapers especially the celebrated ones reach the hinterland 24-48 hours later and sometimes never. In such circumstances, radio and TV do become the only source of information and it therefore becomes necessary to share such research/references to bust myths and empower with original citations.

So why haven’t the celebrity anchors cracked the Omerta Code of news research? Why aren’t they sharing their references? The meta-narrative has been oft-discussed, Labour supporters turning against the poor in UK, The Indian Communist Party leadership devoid of anyone from the real working class and Indian newsrooms captured by the elite capture. The story is familiar. But what this lack of connection does is manifest in grotesque ways, including, but not limited to, not sharing a reference list with audience.

While Ravish is from small town India, Motihari (Bihar), he understands and has perhaps lived through the challenges of small-towners. Maybe this is also a reason for him sharing his references – other than that of transparency in journalism. Call it a one-off instance, but we need more such one-offs mainstreamed and made into norms. And that is possible only when our newsrooms and edit boards are pluralised and democratised with representations from hinterland India. And the strangle-hold of power-elite, dynastic journalists hailing from mega-cities and metropolises are broken.

Media-watch programmes do it all the time, Urmilesh does it in Media Manthan of Rajya Sabha TV, BBC has it in Dateline London and Al Jazeera does it in Listening Post. Even public broadcasters like DD and BBC have dedicated daytime broadsheet discussion sections. But then, these are media watch programmes dedicated to analysing and commenting on how the media is reporting on the matters of the day/week. We need this reference sharing/disclosure in regular news programmes too. Veteran journalist Prabhas Joshi used to do that in his columns and commentary and P Sainath does it in his reportage.It should happen more, much more and across all platforms (print and electronic). Are our primetime anchors listening?