The Speakers’ Corner still exists in London’s Hyde Park. On any given weekend, you could find individuals standing there on a chair to deliver a lecture on what they think is a subject of crucial importance. A sizeable crowd gathers to listen to them.
At ThePrint, we have our own special corner for speakers: It’s called ‘ThePrint Speakers Bureau’.
It features distinguished and articulate experts from various fields who decode the latest news developments by combining historical perspective with informed analysis of possible outcomes.
Perhaps more than ever, we need to make sense of a world that offers a glutton’s feast of information, but scarce understanding of what’s happening around us.
This month, in the Readers’ Editor column, let me tell you a little about this latest initiative from ThePrint.
Before that, let me quickly share with you another positive news.
ThePrint is now a member of the News Broadcasters & Digital Association (NBDA), which represents the interests and articulates the opinions of private television and digital news broadcasters on matters that concern the industry.
The NBDA has set standards for industry codes and ethics for members to abide by. It also offers a self-regulatory mechanism and a redressal body to adjudicate on complaints against its members.
For The Print, the NBDA membership is another step toward reaffirming our commitment to credibility and transparency—and to gaining the trust of our audience.
A rare opportunity
ThePrint Speakers Bureau offers a rare opportunity to engage with some of the most thoughtful people commenting on public affairs. These include politicians, academics, geopolitical strategists, military veterans, best-selling authors as well as award-winning journalists.
To name a few: RSS intellectual Seshadri Chari, TMC Rajya Sabha MP Sagarika Ghose, BJP’s Manvendra Singh, historian Anirudh Kanisetti, former diplomat Ajay Bisaria, former Chief of Army Staff General MM Naravane (retired), Indologist Patrick Olivelle, economist Renuka Sane, geopolitical scholar Swasti Rao, and journalists Vir Sanghvi, Praveen Swami, and, of course, ThePrint’s founder and Editor-in-Chief, Shekhar Gupta.
These experts regularly write opinion pieces for ThePrint—you must have read them. Their choice for ThePrint Speakers Bureau reflects our core focus areas: politics, policy, defence, foreign policy, history, and cultural change. The objective is to take the ideas printed on the website into public spaces and contribute to conversations on issues shaping the contemporary world.
There is an audience and a demand for these dialogues: ThePrint has been receiving requests for speaking engagements. Rolee Kachru, Head, Marketing & Business Development, ThePrint, says corporates often want to host public conferences where they want such expert speakers. “We can offer them names from our basket, help tailor the events and coordinate between them and the speakers,” she said.
Basically, organisations holding events that require expert speakers can contact ThePrint Speakers Bureau, which will suggest a guest speaker and then coordinate their participation in the event with the organisers. Seamless and simple.
The Bureau is just a few months old and information about it has been mostly word of mouth. “This is at a preliminary stage. We are going case by case,” said Kachru.
Also read: Pahalgam, Pakistan generals, pitches—what readers wrote to us in May
A step forward
The News Broadcasters & Digital Association was established in 2007. Initially, it only represented news broadcasters organisations. Then in 2021, it expanded to include digital news outlets—as associate members.
The NBDA’s website explains the rationale behind it: “The objects of NBDA is to lay-down and foster high standards, ethics and practices in news broadcasting, including entertaining and deciding complaints against or in respect of broadcasters in so far as these relate to the content of any broadcast.”
That tells you why it is important to be a part of such an organisation. ThePrint is now seven years old. It has an established audience and a reputation for credible journalism.
In compliance with government regulations, I was appointed as Readers’ Editor in 2021 to act as a go-between for ThePrint and its readers, to convey readers’ views to ThePrint and help address their complaints.
The NBDA is the next logical step forward—to move from internal self-regulation to oversight by an independent authority. Nisheeth Upadhyay, Editor (Operations), said joining the NBDA made sense for ThePrint at this stage. “We feel we must hold ourselves accountable to high standards of industry codes, not just our own. This brings in greater transparency, checks and balances.”
Also, the government has issued guidelines under the IT Act 2000, some of which apply to digital news media. As part of NBDA, we have, as Upadhyay calls it, “institutional backing and a collective voice” to interact with the government on policy, guidelines, and redressal of complaints received by different official agencies. For instance, we have received complaints from individuals who wrote to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The latter forwarded them to us.
Now, this process can be streamlined.
The NBDA has a two-tier complaint redressal system, says Annie Joseph, Secretary General, NBDA. “The first level is between the individual complainant and the media organisation, which is obliged to answer within 15 days. At the second level, if the individual is dissatisfied with the response or doesn’t receive any from the media operator, they can come to us,” she said.
Justice AK Sikri (retd) heads the NBDA’s News Broadcasting & Digital Standards Authority, which will consider the complaint afresh and come to a decision within two to three months. “There is 99.9 per cent compliance with its orders,” said Joseph.
The other advantage of being part of a representative body such as the NBDA is that you get to network with other media organisations and “…be at the table where conversations about your future are taking place,” said Upadhyay.
If any government agency holds a meeting for news media companies, ThePrint will now be part of that conversation. It will have a say. “We will be in touch with the latest developments, and can strategise over them as a collective,” Upadhyay added.
Joseph concurs. A lot of issues such as copyright, new bills for telecom or broadcasting, which affect news media, need a collective response: The NBDA does that. It makes recommendations, raises objections.
Does the government listen to it? Well, the NBDA and other media representatives had many reservations about particular guidelines in the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill. It got shelved. There may have been factors other than industry representations that led to that decision, but “the government does accommodate our views,” said Joseph.
Shailaja Bajpai is ThePrint’s Readers’ Editor. Please write in with your views and complaints to readers.editor@theprint.in
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)