Last night, anchor Ravish Kumar went on air to host his show Prime Time like he does at 9 p.m. on most weeknights. But this time he had something different in store.
About a minute into the show, the screen started fading to black, as Kumar continued talking about the state of the news media in the country today.
Kumar said, “This is why we want to take you into the darkness where you can hear and understand the noise that the news media has started to create.”
“Us anchors, including me, have started to scream and threaten. And when you see us angry at everything, you get angry at everything,” he continued, as messages popped up on screen telling the audience that this wasn’t a technical error.
“There is a lot of anger on the news, but barely any information. Our job is only to question those in power. Our job isn’t to stir or incite emotions.”
“We have forgotten this and we have made mistakes. But recently, it’s starting to seem like we aren’t making these mistakes by accident. We’re doing them on purpose, just for TRPs.”
“Look at the coverage of the JNU incident over the past few days. Us anchors have only been fanning the flames of hatred inside you with our screaming and shouting.”
“This is why we have darkened the screen,” he said. “So that we hear what we say.”
For the following hour, Kumar conducted the show with only his voice, including samples from other news channels’ JNU coverage.
“Ravish Kumar” was soon trending on Twitter in India, and he even got a shout-out from the Delhi Chief Minister.
Sahil Rizwan is a social news reporter for BuzzFeed and is based in Mumbai.
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