Abhinandan shifts the conversation towards the arrest of Julian Assange and the panel debates if his work qualifies as ethical journalistic enterprise. Anand feels it is more in the genre of ‘information banditry’. Madhu says, “What they did was they just hacked everything and dumped it all…the way it was done was not journalism.” The panel agrees that editorial discretion is crucial when dealing with data as raw as this and that it should have been processed in a more refined manner to serve public interest.

The panel picked up the recent appointment of Sadhvi Pragya by the BJP to contest the seat in Bhopal. While the panel was initially unsurprised by this decision, given the Hindutva roots of the party, Abinandan points out how indefensible this decision was. He says, “He [Kamal Nath] was in politics, he’s accused of that [1984 anti-Sikh riots] and in continuation, he got a ticket again. Sadhvi Pragya has got a ticket because of her accusation…there’s a big difference.” Anand says that Pragya embodies the victimhood narrative that is “deeply entrenched in the psyche [of the voters] that they [the BJP] want to appeal to”.

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