Winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award and more recently the Gauri Lankesh Award, Ravish Kumar spoke to Brut India about practising journalism in the times of Narendra Modi.
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00:00People ask me why I am against Modi. I am not against Modi. I am not.
00:07I am the same government entity, Ravi Sheth.
00:31People ask me why I am against Modi. I am not against Modi. I am not.
00:39If I was against Modi, I would have never told the story of all the supporters of Modi who are being harassed for jobs and exams.
00:48I would have never told the story of all the supporters of Modi who are being harassed for jobs and exams.
00:55Why should the minister of the Indian government accuse me? Why should the spokesperson of the BJP accuse me?
01:00Why?
01:01I had given space to half of those people in my program. I used to call them myself and they used to come.
01:07Suddenly it stopped. Why?
01:09This is not an ordinary thing.
01:11If you look at the landmark of 2014, the media has never been so bad in the history of India as it was during the Modi government.
01:30But the media prepared to be bad even before the Modi government came.
01:37They wanted to save themselves on the pretext of the Modi government.
01:42So the media is hiding all their deeds in the name of Modi.
01:47But before the Modi government came, they used to show ghosts.
01:51The Taliban has come 400 km away from Delhi.
01:54There was a channel that used to show that the world will end in November 2012 or 2011.
02:00Look at how the TV has attacked the public's sensibility.
02:09People are still not able to understand that this is a journalist doing his job.
02:15No, no, now that journalist is not doing the job of a journalist.
02:19That is anti-citizen media and pro-government media.
02:24That is why the voice of a citizen is demonized.
02:29It is told that you are a devil, you are bad for the country.
02:32People can be deceived by anyone they want.
02:35The truth is that this media has killed the democracy of India.
02:40It is not a part of the public.
02:43The government does what it wants.
02:54Jawaharlal Nehru and the Taliban
03:02I felt better here than there.
03:06A lot of people are writing letters.
03:09Look, there are 58 postcards from Jawaharlal Nehru.
03:15Different people have written them.
03:18And they have written them with a lot of love.
03:21But they are still spending their hard-earned money on these cheap newspapers.
03:28And they are spending their precious time on TV channels.
03:31I tell them that if you have to go to the toilet and you are not getting anything,
03:34then take the newspaper inside.
03:36It is a very serious job.
03:38Read the newspaper carefully.
03:39How much news is there in it?
03:41And how cunning is the news in the name of news?
03:43If there is, then close that newspaper immediately.
03:45And deposit that money in the Prime Minister's pension.
03:48So that he can help people with that money.