In 2007, my friend Bishakha Datta and I both made documentaries about the media.

Hers, called Taaza Khabar, was about a grassroots newspaper called Khabar Lahariya, which emerged from an adult literacy program and was run by rural women, primarily Dalit. Mine, called Morality TV aur Loving Jehad: Ek Manohar Kahani, was about an event called Operation Majnoo, which inaugurated an era of news television as tabloid landscape, not only competing for eyeballs with “sting operations” but becoming a medium to manufacture consent for ideas like love jihad and the world view that surrounds it. In Taza Khabar, we watch the women reporters go to a DTP shop, to print out their hand-drawn newspaper, and sell it at two rupees a copy in the market. In Morality TV we watch stringers hound and bully people into being filmed for “breaking news”.