Harini Calamur's Writings
“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”— A.J. Liebling Today, that freedom belongs not to journalists, but to billionaires. In the past, owning a press meant printing influence. Today, owning a platform means owning perception. Elon Musk…
This appeared in FPJ in early December On October 11th, CNN journalist Sara Sidner sent waves of horror and shock across the world, when she reported that 40 Israeli babies were beheaded by Hamas. A few days earlier, on October 7th Hamas…
The news business models are broken. What remains are platforms that are trying to create strife to keep people watching. I write in the FPJ on this phenomenon Towards the end of May, on a televised live debate on a leading news…
I wrote this piece on media polarisation and the role that anchors play, and why trust in the media is at an all time low, for the FPJ In the last two years, since the lockdown began, most of us have become…
This piece on Big Tech and censorship appeared in the FPJ on the 7th of June 2021 On the 1st of June this year, Nigerian President Mohammadu Buhari made his government’s equivalent of “goli maaro saalon ko” tweet. Sending out a stern…
This appeared in the FPJ on the 15th of March, 2021 Last Fortnight, the Freedom Report, by the US think tank Freedom House, downgraded India’s rankings to “Partly Free”. The Swedish V-Dem Institute, released its report a week later and downgraded India…
i write for the FPJ on the link between Big Tech and Extremism Last week, a mob of white extremists, egged on by a President who refused to accept the November election results, attempted to overturn the US elections, and overthrow the…
Chanakya talked about Gudayuddha, or the secret war – that used clandestine methods, including misinformation, to win wars. Disinformation is not a modern phenomenon. It has been used for centuries, if not aeons.
A few days ago Donald Trump, the President of the United States tweeted, as he usually does But, what was unusual was that twitter slapped a fact check label on this, that derailed the not very stable President of the US. He…
This piece on Twitter banning Political Ads appeared on the 7th of November Last week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that the platform will not carry any paid political ads. He tweeted “We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on…