In the midst of the heat and dust of India’s long, drawn out general election, an important milestone was quietly reached on You Tube. Journalist Ravish Kumar crossed 1 crore (or 10 million) subscribers on the digital platform. Ravish, my former colleague at NDTV, quit the channel last year when billionaire Gautam Adani bought it (I resigned as well).
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Read the full story here: https://gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds/how-youtube-is-filling-credibility-gap-in-india-elections-1.102894027
See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV
#UAEnews #India #politics
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NewsTranscript
00:00One of the more interesting phenomena of the Indian general election this year has been
00:08the rise of YouTubers who've been doing phenomenally well in the media space. Now why has this
00:15happened? It's happened largely because traditional mainstream media in India has lost its credibility
00:21and this is particularly true of television news, which is seen as partisan and biased
00:25completely in favour of the government and with very little critical reporting of what
00:31are the issues that people care about. In the absence of that kind of criticism and
00:37genuine journalism in that sense, it is the YouTubers and the YouTube stars who've emerged
00:42as these alternate voices. And by the way, it's not just the opposition that finds that
00:49they are using YouTube much more to get their message across. Even the BJP which has nurtured
00:54the mainstream media in the way that it has and captured the mainstream space in a sense
00:59has also been turning to influencers and YouTubers in order to disseminate their message. But
01:05more than those who have party affiliations, it's those who are independent voices that
01:10are really going viral. So they're not just making an impact on their YouTube channels,
01:14but WhatsApp forwards, small clips on social media, etc. And they are the ones that are
01:19asking the most hard hitting questions. It's no surprise then that the government isn't
01:24too pleased and is hoping to bring in more rules to clamp down on the digital media space.