Ruben Banerjee is editor-in-chief of the magazine Outlook. Previously, he worked with the Hindustan Times, Indian Express, Al Jazeera, and India Today. He’s the author of Naveen Patnaik and The Orissa Tragedy: A Cyclone’s Year of Calamity.

Banerjee sat with Manisha Pande to talk about polarisation in the Indian media, viability of news magazines in today’s news market, objectivity in journalism, and abuse of power.

On the magazine’s latest issue, which is devoted to scrutinising the media, he says, “We keep scrutinising others, so why not scrutinise ourselves? We should be holding ourselves to the same yardstick or benchmarks, and that is what we have done.”

Asked about the comparison in the cover story between Ravish Kumar of NDTV and Sudhir Chaudhary of Zee News, Banerjee says, “They are not on a par, but they are representative of a trend that we are witnessing in the media. It is not that one should absolutely be on par with the other, but there are two sides and they represent the two sides.”

Recalling the Radia tapes investigation, he says, “I was aghast. I did not know the truth but I was absolutely aghast that something like this can happen.”

He also talks about the need for critiquing those in power and how the political preferences of journalists shape their coverage.

Watch.