Reporters Without Orders Ep 27: WhatsApp, Assam and mob lynchings, media's Jio story and more

The latest episode of Reporters Without Orders features our host Cherry Agarwal, along with Rohin Verma, Amit Bhardwaj and our special guest Abhishek Dey from Scroll.in.Kicking off the discussion, Amit says Jio got quite some coverage. “Jio is like any other telecom network in the country, why do you have to show it [as much] or give wall-to-wall coverage to whatever is happening during the launch? I think a small package or a couple of online stories would do, unless Jio is paying a lot of money.”Cherry adds, “In that case, they should have been putting a disclaimer, if it was about money in return for coverage.”Speaking about an event that was under-reported, Amit says, “Around 14,000 political activists and bandh supporters were on the streets and were detained by Jharkhand police. Majorly, none of the news channels gave it coverage during the day.”Abhishek speaks about the media's coverage of mob lynchings fuelled by WhatsApp rumours about child-lifters in Assam. “There are two things which are operating [contributing], primarily, one is the fear of the outsider, and the other would be technology. The victims in all these cases are outsiders.”Abhishek also speaks about how the idea of a child-lifter that was traditionally used to control the behaviour of children is now manifesting into a mob culture. "When we look into these kinds of things, we should always correlate them with development indices," he adds. “The solution should be designed in the context of the people which it is aimed for," comments Cherry.Rohin feels that lynching doesn’t seem to be an issue for the general public. “Jo humare regional akhbaar hai, unme iss tarah ki khabrein aa nahi rahi hain, aur bohot kam aa rahi hain, toh logon ke liye lynching koi bohot badi samasya nahi hai.”He adds, “WhatsApp ka iss tareekey ka prabhav hai ki padha-likha aadmi bhi apni padhai ko galat manta hai aur WhatsApp ko sahi manta hai. [The impact of WhatsApp is such that even educated people attach more value to WhatsApp over their own learning].”To which Cherry states, “I think it underlines the importance of making media literacy a part of school curriculum.”Rohin then speaks about a report that no one seems to be covering -- a story about the displacement of villagers of the Mahadalit community from Chamandih village in Bihar’s Gaya. The villagers were evicted from their land by Indian Railways. The story received no local coverage, save for a small piece in Dainik Jagran.For this and more, listen up!

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