The third edition of The Media Rumble kicked off today at the India Habitat Centre with an inaugural address from Madhu Trehan, editor-in-chief of Newslaundry. Check out the full schedule of the two-day event here.

Here’s Madhu’s speech in full:

Welcome to the third edition of The Media Rumble. You can keep your phones on. I’d rather you didn’t miss a breaking story or a call from your child’s school. This is the reality of today and I roll with it wholeheartedly.

Our effort has been to include as many journalists, anchors and moderators from as many news organisations as we can, some who possibly we are in competition with. We welcome them and our grateful that they help us make a more meaningful community. But, we news organisations are siblings who will compete with each other in the digital space but when there is common cause we come together to fight for what we believe in. We at Newslaundry applaud their work and thank them for joining us at The Media Rumble.

It is incredibly satisfying and encouraging to see The Media Rumble grow every year. This would not be possible without the support and participation of all you wonderful people, many of whom I’m proud to call my colleagues and many of whom I’m happy to see will be news professionals of tomorrow. This year we have, with the support of UN Women and Oxfam, conducted a survey on a scale never attempted before for our industry.  This project is a survey that looks at gender representation and caste representation in the news space. By news space I’m including leadership positions, by-lines and op-ed page presence, voices on prime time panels and TV news anchors and radio jockeys. We will present this survey have discussions on this at The Media Rumble.

Carrying out the survey was as much of a learning experience as was seeing the numbers that emerged. You may or may not be shocked to know the kind of innocuous and innocent questions that can set off some of our friends and colleagues. This we feel is a necessary step into creating more representative and diverse newsrooms, organisations and news platforms. For me to explain why diversity is important would be like explaining why democracy is desirable. There is no democracy without diversity. For a democracy to be more robust, of which the news industry is an important part, we must respond to the emergence of ambition and drive emanating like never before from previously excluded castes and gender, thereby pushing out of old post colonial cliques that controlled the media. Journalists thrive in a democracy and journalism will thrive with more diversity in it. News organisations seem to have a tough time reaching audiences who are disenfranchised in many ways but we have to find ways to understand those issues and tell those stories. We have to become the hope to instigate change.

I believe there has never has been a greater urgency to discuss the future of journalism and the threats that are actually challenging the existence of real journalism. These threats often come from within our own. Today everyone is a journalist. Which is fine because it is the disintermediation of journalism and democratising it. Tweeting alone can build your career of sorts. Becoming a commentator with no qualifications can give you a lucrative career on television.  But with these new definitions there is a big But. 

Journalism traditionally has had the role of being a watch dog. A profession that is meant to observe, question and challenge power, whether in government, judiciary or anyone in power, including business. We journalists are meant to speak truth to power. To bring facts and truth to citizens so they are better informed to make decisions that affect their lives. That is what is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. All these are well-worn clichés that I would normally deem too boring and never feel the need to repeat.

But today, these clichés stand for what is not there and are struggling to remain true. Today, journalism has become struggle. Our credibility as journalists couldn’t be lower. The public has little empathy with us. Journalists and editors who stood up to Paid News and marketing executives that owners of news organisations pushed on them were left in the dust. That is history now. The challenge today is: how can journalists speak truth to power, raise questions if the same people they are to question actually own the media? Too many politicians and business houses own news organisations. This is exhibit number one in crony capitalism. Is it possible then to raise questions that would expose their questionable actions? What dominates today’s journalism? Clicks decide success and the number of clicks and popularity of a story put a veil of truth on a story whether it is factual or not. It is indeed superb that those who never got to voice an opinion can do so now on social media with alacrity and aplomb and can actually reach those in power. But, it is no longer as Rene Descartes wrote in 1937: I think therefore I am. Today it is: I think. I know. I post it. Therefore I am. The number of Likes and Retweets decide the validity.

People who were called journalists have now openly become mouthpieces for those in power. Hardly any stories are actually done. A subject is chosen every day to simply harangue and scream at those who dare to disagree. Where is the news? This openly partisan approach has taken it completely outside of journalism, the only commonality are the means of production and the medium: television and the internet. Media Rumble has been created to bring journalists following different streams of journalism together. We cannot act superior to others who believe in doing things differently. I believe we must address these issues with camaraderie and solutions. 

Cardinal rules that we are all taught in journalism schools are: Be accurate. Be fair. Don’t make yourself the story. Now we watch in dismay when journalists perceive themselves as the powerful entity with little empathy for the situation or people.

We are now in a place where evidence is pushed aside, critical analysis is termed as dissent, and emotion and ideological beliefs decide what is true. We are looking at the destruction of the brand of journalism itself and its transformation as a tool to only further vested interests. This has corrupted our profession to a degree that it is unrecognisable.

This is the new normal. What can we do about this? This is a great opportunity where journalists practising good journalism must step in. We can collaborate with citizen journalists. As citizens post tweets on incidents sometimes from remote areas, this is where journalists can follow the story, get the other side and analyse and explain nuances to the reader. Journalists can interrogate those responsible, collate disputing viewpoints and pursue the truth of the story relentlessly. This, the average citizen is not trained to do. 

In the old days, opinion and news were kept decisively separate. Young journalists today are functioning with a sense of entitlement to mix their opinions while reporting a story. Thinking has become Twitterised. Today we see a melting pot of news, opinion and advertising all rolled into one often in one article or TV programme. The reader or viewer has now been trained to not know the difference. When you really think about that, you realise how dangerous this is.

We will address these issues at The Media Rumble. Technology continues to march ferociously onward, most of the time extremely useful, at times terrifying. The past year has also shown how technology can help journalists uncover truth. BBC Africa Eye’s investigation into the killing of women and children in Cameroon. The team used open-source technology, collaborative human networks, combined with tools like Google Earth to show where and when the atrocity took place—and to finger the likely culprits. The resulting TV programme and Twitter thread is expected to win awards this year. We now have an app that can doctor words onto anyone’s image and it is these what are now called Deep Fake that are nearly undetectable even with the most sophisticated equipment.

A video of Barack Obama calling Trump a “total and complete dipshit” was released in April by film director Jordan Peele in conjunction with BuzzFeed as a way of raising awareness about how AI-generated synthetic media could be used to distort and manipulate reality. The excitement of science creating new possibilities sometimes ignores the dangers of it.

Yes those are realities we must address but there’s actually never been a more adventurous time in finding new ways to tell our stories. Last year we had Francesca Panetta, executive editor of virtual reality at The Guardian, who showed us how they were using virtual reality to immerse people right into their stories. Podcasts are seeing the biggest upswing. In fact Newslaundry’s Daily Dose and weekly Hafta often appear as the top podcasts on iTunes. 

And no journalism of any kind can survive without revenue. The stronger your revenue the more freedom you have to practice good journalism. Newslaundry believes in the subscription model removing all influence from advertisers or government. The NYT reported 3.1 million digital subscribers,  Guardian has one million supporters and many others. That doesn’t mean that other methods of creating a good business out of journalism are less valid. I’m sure you will enjoy the discussions we will have on various revenue models in practice.

As you can see from the programme, journalists and knowledgeable experts from technology and business will be dealing with all these issues and more. I’m sure you will enjoy asking your questions and interacting with them. 

Newslaundry editors and reporters are available at the venue so please feel free to come up and talk to us. So, let’s rumble.