This week on Hafta, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Jayashree Arunachalam, and Manisha Pande are joined by author Amitava Kumar and academic Joyojeet Pal.
The panel discusses Amitava’s new book The Green Book: An Observer’s Notebook, and Amitava explains the role that journaling plays in his life.
“Journaling is a means of self-discovery and a tool to document our times. Personal narratives can preserve truths and challenge erasures of history,” he says. He also says journaling helps counteract misinformation since it’s “about creating a record that endures beyond fleeting news cycles”. Manisha adds that reading her own journals from her childhood “makes me cringe at times, but they’re a reminder of how far I’ve come”.
The conversation shifts to Meta’s decision to terminate its fact-checking partnerships. Joyojeet warns, “Abandoning fact-checking opens the floodgates for radicalised communities to define their own truths.”
Jayashree says, “ A lot of this is about changing things that are associated with liberalism. And that’s exactly what that revised policy says. It says that you can now make allegations of mental illness or abnormality based on gender and sex. You’re allowed to compare people to faces and filth based on protected characteristics.”
The panel also explores Elon Musk’s controversial claim that social media is the new media, how algorithms shape narratives, and a lot more.
Tune in!
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Song: I Will Survive
Timecodes
00:00:00 - Introductions
00:00:44 - About Fight To Breath Campaign
00:01:50- Panel introduction
00:05:08- Headlines
00:09:57 - The Green Book and journaling
00:30:47- Announcements
00:32:10- Meta’s fact-checking decision
01:02:02 - Social media as news
01:23:03- Special message
01:25:50 - Subscriber letters
01:40:51 - Recommendations
References
NL Sena: The Hindu Rashtra project
Exclusive: In 3 Lok Sabha seats swung by BJP, many wrong voter deletions, violations of EC norms
In Farrukhabad, targeted voter deletions came before BJP’s thin victory margin
The Green Book: An Observer’s Notebook
NL Interviews: Abhinandan Sekhri in conversation with Vivek Agnihotri
NL Interviews: Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury on their book ‘Black Warrant’
Recommendations
Amitava
The Green Book: An Observer’s Notebook
Joyojeet
The I SURVIVED Series
Jayashree
The BBC's Civil War Over Gaza
Manisha
The Trouble with Friends
The Substance
Abhinandan
The potato-shaped loophole in free trade
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Check out previous Hafta recommendations, references, songs and letters
Produced and recorded by Prashant Kumar and Priyali Dhingra.
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