A review of NL Hafta by Vicky, Vijay, Arindam and Sourabh Bhutani

Hi,
I have been a subscriber for a year now and I love your podcasts. It would be great if your stories also had an audio link so that one could hear it on the go. I like your stories but I am not a reading person. And I guess, there would be many more like me who can benefit from this feature. Politico has it for some of the stories.

Vicky

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Hi NL Hafta team,
I’ve been a fan since early 2016 & became a subscriber in September 2016. I know you like short emails, so I decided to compose the few points that I wanted to make in the form of tweets. As an active tweeter for more than a decade, I think better in that form.

I enjoyed the first episode of Reporters Without Borders. It was a refreshing change from the Hafta format that we are all used to. So much information was exchanged with very little idle chatter. Good that Abhinandan acknowledged that. This is bound to become a big hit.

The email from my namesake and fellow doctor, Vijay, read in Hafta 154 was spot on about the known/predictable positions of the usual panellists and this is where the format of Reporters Without Orders becomes innovative. 

Now that you have a Hindi Hafta, you should reduce the usage of Hindi in the main Hafta. Touching on a point that was made by Sahil in his email read in Hafta 154, it is worth the effort to actively search & pick up top stories from South India & the Northeast for weekly discussions.

Lastly, I want to gripe about subscription renewal. I renewed my subscription for 6 months about a week before you offered the 25 per cent year-end discount. Ideally, you should’ve extended that courtesy to people like me who renewed—or subscribed anew—within a short while of that offer.

(BTW, I used an em dash, correctly, I believe, in the previous sentence, Manisha). Another thing that irks me about the renewal is that we lose remaining days if we renew our subscription before the previous period has ended. I’ve written two emails to the team and haven’t gotten a response.

Despite these small niggles, I remain a staunch fan of the Hafta. Regards and best wishes to the entire team. 

Vijay

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Hi NL Team,

I have followed Newslaundry from the very beginning but only became a subscriber ’cause I was having withdrawal pangs of NL Hafta.

In this episode, the discussion was about The Quint‘s story on Kulbhishan Jadhav. Ideally, I think if a story of a spy has to be reported, obviously, the first step has to be reporting to relevant authorities (in case it’s about a foreign spy working in India). I wouldn’t hesitate to report on it not because I don’t value life but rather I trust the Indian judiciary to treat him fairly unlike a military court, which has different sets of laws and is opaque.

Secondly, I wouldn’t report or like anyone else to report when an Indian spy is involved because first and foremost the subject is Indian. Abhinandan pointed that why people are valuing Indian lives over other lives and stuff about humanity? Wake up, buddy. If we had been in an ideal world we wouldn’t be having borders in the first place and spending billions on armies, so stop dreaming about utopia. If I had been a Pakistani, no matter how wrong my country was, and if it would have come to giving up HuD chief to India I would have said no because he is indeed serving my country in a perverted way. Nationalism isn’t singing anthem or song but rather what we do for our country and to protect our citizens.

About the heckling of Shivani, a journalist from RepublicTV, it is really problematic. And ArGo isn’t difficult from rest of the media when it comes to painting everybody else with the same brush. The so-called liberal media always tags the RW media as illogical, loud and as bhakts, while they always aren’t like that. The TV media has completely turned into opinion channels where the editors dictate. I miss the days of DD when it was just news reports where the anchor never expressed what they felt. I will though commend Rajya Sabha TV for great news reports and debates in a studio minus the 10 screens. Also, I am hooked on to news reports and documentaries about India from Al Jazeera and DW, who have made such wonderful programmes which makes me wonder why the Indian media isn’t doing such stories. 

Anand said that the information being linked to Aadhaar is already available which is kind of true but he is wrong in saying what’s wrong with Aadhaar data being open. The thing is the govt has access to many things and if they want to track a person they can do it but having an Aadhaar no. linked to everything makes it easy for the govt to track just about anybody using a simple click. Aadhaar is required but linking it to everything is absurd. Linking it to the bank accounts and PAN is understandable but rest of the things is like creating an equivalent of ‘Stasi’ state.

Another point I didn’t like was the taking apart of Gen. Bakshi.  Having served in the armed forces, Gen. Bakshi should get some respect. I agree with Anand on this that it’s the news channels’ fault who invite him on the channels because they know he gets them drama and eyeballs.

Lastly, I would like to comment on the appeal for more funds so that you can cover the 2019 elections with more reporters. It will be nice but most of them — the people who might donate and subscribe to fund 2019 election coverage — would bail out after the elections. Then what happens to the relatively large team you would have assembled? 

Arindam

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Hi NL team

I have been a big big fan of NL Hafta, in particular, for numerous reasons which could have gone beyond the scope of a 500-word email. But, I was mighty disturbed while listening to Hafta 154 when you discussed Kulbhushan Jadhav’s case. Here’s my take.

Abhinandan, you and the gang are seriously wrong if you are discussing that The Quint story has even the slightest merit. Any spy or agent working covertly for RAW or any other agency is doing so knowing full well that his life (and even sometimes that of his family members) is at stake. But still he is doing his job and he is doing it for his country, that is the Republic of India. Therefore, even if you have ‘fantastic’ and very accurate sources telling you that he’s a spy, you have a moral responsibility towards the country (mind you, not just towards the individual) not to run that story. It does not matter whether the individual is presently in India or in enemy hands. You run the story, he is caught or kidnapped and he will be tortured to hell to leak out more information that is damaging to the country. You will end up putting more lives at stake and ruining years of collective efforts in building assets and agents than just this one case. It is not without reason that these agents are called ‘assets’, and you cannot pawn an asset of the country in the garb of journalism.

PS: I do not know if Kulbhushan Jadhav was or is an Indian agent or not.

Your and your team’s take on this issue has robbed you of about a 100 words from the email that I was about to write praising your work, your ideas, and your kind of journalism.

Regards,

Sourabh Bhutani