“While We Watched“ Documentary Spotlights Journalist Ravish Kumar’s Fight for Truth in Modi’s India

As world leaders from the United States to France welcome Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we look at press freedom in India under the leader of the Hindu nationalist party BJP. One of India’s last bastions of free media, NDTV, has been taken over by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, believed to have close ties to Modi. NDTV’s former executive editor and longtime anchor Ravish Kumar, one of India’s most prominent TV journalists who has reported critically on Modi’s Hindu nationalist policies, is the subject of Vinay Shukla’s film _While We Watched_, which is being released this week in theaters in the United States. We speak to Kumar and Shukla about the “anti-opposition, anti-minorities, anti-Muslim“ state of media in India, where dissent is suppressed and pro-Modi nationalism is the _de facto_ rule. “No sober society can afford to have a kind of rogue media, which is so weaponized,“ says Kumar. Transcript: Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET. Support independent media: Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: