New Delhi: Journalist Palki Sharma is on a warpath. She is fighting all of India’s enemies. She is just not on the frontline and wears no protective gear. Every night from the Firstpost studios, she is batting for India—an India that has been wronged, an India that is prideful and aspiring, an India that will just not be kept down anymore.
In the swanky and stylish 22nd-floor open studio at Firstpost, Sharma passionately presents the main news story of the day—Chinese President Xi Jinping’s absence from the G20 summit in India. She takes her viewers inside the closed-door chaos of the Chinese corridors of power and how Xi’s leadership was questioned by the Communist party elders. She links this to G20. Xi lost face in his home country because of the falling economy, she says with conviction. And he doesn’t want to be questioned about it at G20, which explains his absence, she continues, in her signature delivery style— short, crisp lines with pauses every few sentences.
In many ways, Sharma is the unofficial ambassador of India that no embassy has. Her list of India’s foes is ever-growing — from Beijing to the Washington Consensus to the Soros-funded liberal West to the tyranny of the US dollar. She is a one-woman army, a sort of force of nature and her questions are unceasing.
When she speaks, diplomats, military experts and Indian CEOs and CFOs sit up and take note.
“We need to take control of our stories because otherwise we will be trapped in someone else’s version of our truth. And why should we let that happen?” Sharma tells ThePrint.
And in the last six years, Sharma has broken many stereotypes in her shows. In the 50-minute-long shows—first WION’s Gravitas and then Firstpost’s Vantage—Sharma has questioned the world order and India’s place in it. She has challenged the hegemony of the West in international trade and business, reported extensively on China’s oppressive regime and has even taken on the Western media and their criticism of India. Her shows are well-timed with the aspirational India and Vishwaguru moment.
She is providing an alternative to a large part of the population that may feel that India needs to have its own voice
– Harsh V Pant, ORF
For her audience, her shows are a refreshing take on global issues which were, so far, only being assessed from a Western media lens, explains Harsh V Pant, vice president, studies and foreign policy at Observer Research Foundation, a New-Delhi-based think tank.
“Palki states that there is a bias in the way India is covered. Many people intrinsically in India might feel the same way. She is providing an alternative to a large part of the population that may feel that India needs to have its own voice. And she is tapping into that sentiment. There is a connect there with the audience,” says Pant.
After all, there aren’t too many Indian journalists who can directly address a letter to Xi Jinping calling him out on China’s propaganda on coronavirus. She has given Sino-phobia a new cache and swagger.
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Boosting views
At a time when primetime news on TV channels has been reduced to guests screaming at each other, Palki Sharma’s moralistic monologue is hard to ignore. She did away with guests and experts, broke down foreign affairs news into simple, jargon-free, relatable stories and packed them with data to make her point.
Today, the ‘Palki style’ of news presentation is a hit not just in India, but globally.
“This Indian reporter had a great personality. She’s straight up unlike our woke reporters. More Canadians need to see this amazing report,” says one comment on YouTube under her video on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s G20 stint. “Palki has been keeping me properly informed for many years, something our own Canadian media fails to do,” says another viewer of the same video.
The stickiness of this format is such that the anchors who succeeded her in her previous organisation continue to follow this style of news delivery.
But it’s not all praise for Sharma. She has been called out by Western media and Indian media watchdogs for her poor research.
But the more she is criticised, the more her viewers find confirmation of the Western bias against India. In fact, ‘bias’ is a strong theme that boosts her arguments. The global West, its media and the liberal consensus are biased against India and are not letting it rise. Her shows are the Indian version of The Ingraham Angle on Fox News.
But despite the backlash, Sharma’s popularity is rising, she has created a niche for herself. Within five months of launching Vantage, on Firstpost’s YouTube channel, the viewership rose more than 600 per cent. In seven months, the channel crossed two million subscribers.
Sharma’s G20 coverage also gave the network a big boost. She ran exclusive interviews with Brazilian President Lula Da Silva; South African minister of international relations and cooperation, Grace Naledi Mandisa Pandor, and Nigeria’s foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar. In a front-page ad on 10 September in The Indian Express, Network 18 boasts how YouTube analytics and views show that, from January to August, Firstpost saw a jump of 1,000 per cent.
https://x.com/firstpost/status/1700773117524889773?s=20
An Indian lens
Sharma reinvented herself in 2017 when she joined World Is One News (WION), a channel started by the Zee network in 2016 exclusively for foreign affairs coverage. The channel had fewer competitors, it was just taking shape. Sharma’s rise within the network was steady.
“We did not bother ourselves with the numbers [at WION]. Even without that, we were reflecting in the TRP charts. We knew we were doing something right,” says Sharma, who hosted the primetime show Gravitas.
It was also when global news peaked. In the time she was there, many governments were elected, Covid-19 was declared a pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war began. Sharma and her team were at the top of these developing stories.
“We were the first to report on Covid-19 in December [2019] when it was just a local story in China. We saw that a flu-like disease was spreading and we started reporting it. Then the India-China border situation happened. Later on, we were the first Indian journalists to get a visa to travel to Ukraine to cover the war. All those things set the benchmark for how the show Gravitas could work,” said Aditya Dhunna, senior producer at Firstpost, who has been steering Sharma’s shows since her time at WION. Over a dozen employees from WION left with her to join Firstpost.
But for Sharma, simply reporting the standard nuances of a story was not enough. She took a clear and decisive stand on issues and that is what made her news stand out, say foreign policy experts.
“Palki’s success lies in the unique blend of facts and opinion, which is increasingly becoming the norm. In this day and age of social media, opinions are driving how many followers you have,” says Pant.
In a podcast with Asian News International’s (ANI) editor, Smita Prakash, Sharma explains that her show is like the edit page of a newspaper and she “adds value” to news.
This value addition has become her selling point.
China, one of India’s biggest challengers, occupies a lot of air time on her shows. Packed with data on the country’s economy, finance, growth, unemployment and the rest, she persistently lays down a narrative of how China’s influence in the world is falling and how the power of Chinese President, Xi Jinping, is diminishing.
While world over, the media refers to Coronavirus as Covid-19 pandemic, she calls it the “Wuhan virus”. Three months after China blocked WION in the country and Chinese diplomats blocked the channel on social media, in July 2020, Sharma wrote an open letter to Xi chiding him on his failing propaganda.
The rhetoric that China’s economy is falling and Xi’s crushing of dissent will be the end of him is a constant in her shows.
While China is the aggressor, according to Sharma, all is not well with the West either. She questions what authority the US media commands in raising issues of human rights abuses in India when their own country is struggling with racism and gun violence. She questions why US President Joe Biden is a powerless figure when it comes to ensuring women’s abortion rights in the US. In the international trade arena, she questions why the dollar should dominate.
Palki’s success lies in the unique blend of facts and opinion, which is increasingly becoming the norm
– Harsh V Pant, ORF
As many countries realise the limitations of being overly dependent on the US dollar, is the uncontested rally of the big currency ending, she asks. Her de-dollarisation tirades are hugely popular and shores up the hopes of many Indian viewers. The support for this call defies logic, but works very well for national pride.
“The world is changing. Countries don’t want their fortunes to be held in one currency, at the mercy of one country,” she says on one of her shows, referring to the US dollar.
Through her shows, she says she tries to break free from the Western-centric view of the world. “If I want to do a story on Nepal today, I don’t have a reporter or an agency there I have access to. So, I have to rely on the Western agencies and they will see these as exotic places ” she says. “In our small ways, with our limited resources, we have been able to widen that lens,” she adds.
A story of a Non-Resident Indian mother committing suicide because her children were taken away by the state childcare authority in Australia made its way into her show, Vantage. She cited other similar cases in Germany and Norway.
“Every time such a case hits the headlines, it becomes a diplomatic incident. And each time the same question is raised—is this a case of child safety or is it overreach by authorities? Where do you draw the line between cultural differences and safety?” she asked on the show aired on 4 September.
In a recent episode, Palki Sharma dared to ask a question that everybody has considered but was too afraid to ask. Why are iPhones so expensive in India? She questions the high price difference of the device and why, despite the manufacturing happening in India, the phones are steeply-priced here compared to four other countries such as Vietnam and the UK. Apple saves on transportation and import taxes, yet the prices of the phones have not dropped in India, she says. “Growth without innovation. How do they do it?” she asks, as Apple’s shares keep rising without any unique features in the new phones.
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Need for original reports
Sharma brings with her strong views on how Indian newsrooms should be dynamic with the changing times. She claims that there is no dearth of talent or money in media houses. She says that to get original stories as they break from the world over, she needs more reporters on the ground. And Indian media organisations have to be truly global to be able to compete with international media houses.
“We are exhibiting a worrying lack of vision. If I really want to make a difference, if I really want to do something that represents India’s voice, then I’m going to have to have teams based in various cities in the world. I will need original reports,” she says.
To cover the Ukraine war, Sharma had a team of four people with her. But that was no match for the 30-member teams from international media houses.
“I think we are not there yet in terms of what we are investing in an international channel. We have made a small start here [at Firstpost]. Let’s see where this goes,” she adds.
Besides, retaining talent in newsrooms is a constant battle, Sharma says. It’s the people who add character to stories, but talented people leave because the industry is not compensating them enough, she says.
That she’s stuck with journalism for over two decades is not an indication of an easy ride. Sharma says she deserves the success that she has today. “It can be overwhelming at times. I feel tired in my bones. You feel burnt out. You do feel that you need to slow down. But what I do and the people I work with can be a very rewarding experience,” she says.
Rising India
Against the backdrop of Sharma’s global coverage is India’s rise. And India is rising, despite the odds stacked against it. She is carrying the baton of this new, advancing India.
She did over 10 shows on Chandrayaan-III in two weeks. These stories not only talked about India’s milestone in the space race but also highlighted how a section of people in the West are insecure of India’s success. In one of her shows titled, ‘Why is the West Questioning India’s Achievements?’’ she says that the West is discrediting India’s triumphs and questioning India’s motives.
“When Chandrayaan happened, we all saw it happen live. Yet there is a narrative being built that it was a fake landing. How is that okay,” says a visibly riled-up Sharma. Reporting from the US in June during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit, she hits out at Western media and US think tanks for criticising human rights abuses in India. She alleges that it was an attempt to sabotage India-US relations. Such articles, she adds, reflect the US’ “superiority complex”.
“But the folks inside the White House should realise, everyone loses patience at some point,” she says in the show. Using data on India’s growth rates, GDP projections and other numbers, Sharma puts India on a pedestal in her shows. “We are projecting India as an important stakeholder, as a country of 1.4 billion people. I think we have a right to be on the decision-making table, like the United Nations Security Council. If we don’t deserve permanency, I don’t know who does,” she says.
While no country is without problems, the Western media, she says, is missing the progress India is making. She makes it her duty to highlight this progress.
If I really want to make a difference, if I really want to do something that represents India’s voice, then I’m going to have to have teams based in various cities in the world
– Palki Sharma
In one of her shows on Chandrayaan, she asked if The New York Times would release a new cartoon where India is not shown as a country knocking on the door of the “elite space mission club”. She also took on Washington Post’s report on riots in France. The report says that the protestors are creating an opening for the far right, but Sharma counters that the protestors were against systemic racism.
ThePrint reached out to reporters from the New York Times and Washington Post, but they declined to comment.
“India is a highly aspirational country today. It’s our moment. We have arrived. So, when you talk in a language which is aspirational about India’s rise and global presence, you connect with your audience. That encapsulates a lot of the attraction that people have,” says Pant.
Capturing this niche has made her a dominant voice in the international news space.
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‘Pro-Modi Pundit’
Last month, in an article about India’s foreign news coverage, The Economist called Sharma a “pro-Modi Pundit”. In her shows, it adds, she “relentlessly bashes China and Pakistan” and “castigates the West”.
The article not just criticised her but also the emerging focus of Indian media in the world, which it called “hyperpartisan, nationalistic and often stunningly ill-informed”. “What is the Indian perspective? Watch Ms Sharma and a message emerges: everywhere else is terrible,” it reads. The article points out factual inaccuracies in Sharma’s coverage of the riots in France, and labels the Indian media’s coverage hyper-defensive of Modi.
The same evening the article was published, Sharma called out the magazine for its arrogance.
“It’s an insult wrapped up as analysis,” she says on her show. “Western media can criticise India all they want to. When they do it, it’s freedom of press. But when the Indian media criticises the West, it is ill-informed,” she adds.
Sharma dug out the old editions of the publication, put up on screen and pointed out that it supported the US’ war on Iraq and that it got the recession predictions “wrong”, among many other things.
Sharma’s coverage has also not escaped the scrutiny of the Indian media watchdogs. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Sharma criticised the US media for reporting on India’s deadly second wave while ignoring the same on their home turf. But a Newslaundry report notes that before Sharma’s show aired, multiple US media outlets had already reported on the crumbling resources for Covid-19 in the US.
In 2022, Sharma said that India can “engineer floods and droughts” in Pakistan through its control of the river Indus and questioned why India is shy of “exercising this power”.
https://x.com/palkisu/status/1531557402482397184?s=20
It drew instant criticism on X (formerly Twitter). One user pointed out that the suggestion is a violation of the Indus Waters Treaty and the Geneva Convention. After the backlash, Sharma tweeted a clarification that the tweet doesn’t capture the nuance of the video story.
The making of Palki
By 2022, WION’s identity was synonymous with Sharma. She had built ‘brand Palki’ and was poached by a rival media organisation, Network 18, to revive its fading property, Firstpost in January 2023. After an ugly court battle over her exit from WION, Sharma’s new innings was announced with a full front-page advertisement in The Indian Express on 26 January 2023.
But behind this meteoric rise was decades of hard work, say her former colleagues. She began her career with media outlets in her home town of Jaipur before she moved on to Doordarshan in the early 2000s. After a stint at Hindustan Times, she moved on to the erstwhile CNN-IBN in 2005. She hosted the channel’s breakfast show till 2016, after which she moved to WION in 2017.
Her shows [at CNN-IBN] sometimes grabbed more viewers than the primetime show of the channel, says Shreya Dhoundial, news anchor and Sharma’s former colleague.
“As an anchor, Palki has her own style. She has the ability to do many things and make it look effortless. That shows in her anchoring as well,” says Dhoundial.
Among her generation of journalists, Sharma is perhaps the only breakout star, adds Dhoundial. Sharma’s seamless scripts and easy news delivery were an instant hit. She pauses strategically to let her commentary sink in.
“Palki is brilliant at what she does. She has redefined primetime. She makes news more digestible and consumable. She has shown that you don’t have to shout to be heard,” says a former colleague. “She is not talking at you, but she’s talking to you [when she presents]. That makes a whole lot of difference,” he adds.
Even though Sharma lives and works in the national capital, her love for books, art and culture keeps pulling her back to Jaipur. She is often spotted at Jaipur Literature Fest, discussing books, music and politics, says a Jaipur-based journalist and visual storyteller, who did not want to be named.
On Sharma’s desk at Firstpost, lies a copy of Henry Kissinger’s Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy. A pencil neatly placed between pages, towards the end of the book, functions as a bookmark.
“I read and I make notes [in the book]. So, I cannot lend my books to anyone,” she says.
Her desk faces four TV screens, they’re playing BBC, Russia TV, Al Jazeera and Deutsche Welle. The evening production rush is yet to begin and her team is hard at work, going through the top international news of the day. The click-clack of their keyboards breaking the silence in the otherwise quiet newsroom.
Besides her weekday show Vantage, Sharma also hosts Flashback and Between The Lines. The former is a weekly show on historical events and the latter airs on Sunday and it explains key issues such as the gender pay gap, the internet as a basic right.
“I think there is a genuine interest in the Indian perspective, as we call it,” she says. And if it rattles so many people, she adds that she must be doing something right.
“India cannot be rejected as a country of Hindu-Muslim divide, or a poor country, or a country with hyper-nationalism. These are the realities of India, but there are many other realities. And who is going to show those realities if we don’t,” asks Sharma.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)