Peabody Awards: Ravish Kumar calls ‘Indian Media disgrace,’ appeals support for ‘good journalism’
New Delhi: Renowned Journalist Ravish Kumar strongly criticized the Indian mainstream media calling it a disgrace to Journalism and Humanity. He was speaking while accepting the ‘Peabody Award’ alongside Vinay Shukla, for his documentary ‘while we watched' on Kumar, on June 9 at Los Angeles in the USA.
The award honors the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in all of television, radio, and online media during 2023. The awards are held in high esteem within the media industry due to their academic affiliation and reputation for discernment.
The documentary “While We Watched,” directed by Vinay Shukla, chronicles Ravish Kumar’s journey over two years as he faces violent personal threats, falling network ratings at NDTV, staffing losses, funding issues, and deep ethical dilemmas. The award citation describes it as a “powerful defense of independent journalism” and a “poignant portrait of everyday courage in the face of radicalized politics and publics.”
During his speech at the ceremony Kumar delivered a scathing critique of the mainstream Indian news system, he said, “When a journalist becomes a spreader of hate and lies, an instigator of mob lynching, a cheerleader for the government, [they] become an instrument to kill democracy. When hundreds of news channels repeat the same, they become a weapon to kill humanity. Most of the Indian mainstream media is a disgrace to democracy and humanity.”
Kumar expressed gratitude to his family and supporters, stating, “I would like to remember my wife Nayana, my brave daughters Tanima and Tanisha, who suffered a lot, and my millions of viewers who felt hopeless, helpless, and stateless because of this criminal Indian mainstream media. They came in search of hope. They supported me. They gave me hope to do journalism. Whenever you get the chance, please do support good journalism. You will get a good democracy. Thank you.”
Ravish Kumar has persistently criticized the Indian Media and also labeled it ‘Godi Media’ (Media sitting on Lap). In 2022, after quitting NDTV, the channel he was the face of for decades, following the channel's takeover by Billionaire Gautam Adani, the popular Journalist switched to Youtube, and is one of the foremost independent voices in Indian journalism today.
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Bengaluru: In a significant move towards enhancing disaster preparedness, the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC), in collaboration with UNICEF, launched the Karnataka State Disaster Risk Reduction Roadmap (KSDRR) 2025-2030 on Monday, marking the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.
With this initiative, Karnataka has become the fifth state in India to launch the Disaster Risk Reduction Roadmap, following Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Assam, as reported by The New Indian Express.
The new roadmap is designed to mitigate the impact of natural disasters and reduce the state’s vulnerability. Over the past five years, Karnataka has suffered an estimated Rs 1 lakh crore in losses due to floods, droughts, lightning, hailstorms, fire, and other calamities. Addressing these challenges, Mullai Muhilan, Director of KSNDMC, emphasised that the goal of the KSDRR is to implement a systematic approach to preventing and managing such disasters.
“The theme on this day is ‘Fund Resilience, Not Disasters’, and that is why this roadmap is a framework of existing solutions to reduce and prevent losses by mitigating floods, drought, earthquakes, heat waves and so on,” TNIE quoted Muhilan as saying.
The KSDRR outlines a multi-phase strategy, which includes a vulnerability profile of Karnataka, highlights DRR developments, initiatives taken in the state, financial arrangements, and defines the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders as per the National Disaster Management Act, 2005.
The roles and responsibilities, work implementation in the road map are based on three major milestones divided to achieve in five years. All departments, gram panchayats have prepared disaster management plans with latest data as baseline information.
In milestone 2 for the year 2027-28, the roadmap envisions that the state has to collaborate and partner with various stake holders from local to global level. In milestone 3, for the year 2029-30, it mentions reducing infrastructure damage, human and animal deaths, casualties by 75%.
“Currently, KSNDMC has applications including Varuna Mitra, dedicated mainly to providing weather forecast to farmers across the state. Similarly, we have Megha Sandesha, a mobile app developed in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science. This app was created to mitigate urban floods and it provides information to various government bodies especially BWSSB, and others. We are still working on this app to provide information and data to BDA, GBA on the areas that might flood in the future. They can use this data before giving clearance to buildings of layouts,” explained Muhilan.
As part of the roadmap, several government departments have been directed to work towards risk identification, risk reduction, preparedness, financial protection, and resilient recovery. For instance, the Education Department will be responsible for developing school-level disaster management plan.
The roadmap also outlines a robust infrastructure for real-time disaster monitoring. Karnataka has already installed 6,500 telemetric rain gauge stations at the gram panchayat level, alongside 850 telemetric weather stations at the taluk level. Other installations include lightning and thunderstorm sensors, water level sensors in Bengaluru and surrounding cities, and seismic sensors at major dam sites.
