9. Manisha Pande - TV works as the government’s megaphone

In this episode, Manisha Pande, managing editor of Newslaundry and writer and host of TV Newsance, a critique of broadcast news, says the most troubling development of the last few years is that television news has turned against the people whose travails it is supposed to cover. Even public rejection of certain TV channels by people on the ground, their refusal to speak to reporters of these channels, is not forcing a rethink in studios about their pro-government news format. This, she says, is because access to the government has become all important to the business of TV news channels. Manisha Pande also speaks of the communalisation of television news from 2016 onwards, in which anti-Muslim tropes are now part of the nightly news format. She says if people are prepared to vote for Modi and the BJP in spite of their economic condition worsening, it is because of 24x7 propaganda on TV news channels that “Modi has made the country great”.