00:00India's most influential news platform, the India Today Group, had a decisive role to play at the World Economic Forum,
00:07with Vice Chairperson and Executive Editor-in-Chief Kalipuri first leading a conversation on India's growth story
00:13and then joining an elite panel of global journalists to discuss the challenges facing journalism,
00:19from government interference to trust and the impact of artificial intelligence.
00:30What is the state of the fourth estate?
00:32It was in this high-stakes dialogue at the World Economic Forum that India's top news network also found a place.
00:39In a time of growing global disorder, as authority increasingly presses upon the fourth estate,
00:45how has the India Today Group navigated these challenging times?
00:50The third estate, which is sort of not really wanting you to call out problems.
00:57They want more confirmation bias, which puts the media a little bit more on the back foot.
01:02Because if you're always serving your audience with a confirmation bias,
01:06how do you then go around doing the watchdog job that you need to do?
01:12Everyone always wants more.
01:14And I would obviously like even more freedom to do more things.
01:18But I think that we have to work within a cultural context.
01:24In the end, media are observers and we are front row to history being made.
01:31We can't just go around giving our own opinions on things.
01:33There is space for that, obviously, and we have that.
01:37But that's a mix in the bigger plate.
01:40Ms Puri also touched upon how the India Today Group is ensuring that journalism still remains people-centric.
01:47One of the things that we are working on, and I think that it's nascent and it has had a good impact,
01:55is go back to creating constructive, candid conversations.
02:01We've actually set up a whole unit just to do that, triple Cs,
02:05where you get people from different communities who don't agree with each other
02:09to talk to each other and take out the experts, the journalists, the politicians out of that conversation.
02:15We, in the media, sometimes try to console ourselves by saying,
02:19well, trust in all institutions is going down, trust in Congress, trust in organized religion.
02:27Well, fine, but trust in the media not only should be high because we are in a trust business,
02:35but it has to be high because I don't think you can have a well-functioning democracy
02:38where there is pervasive mistrust about the organizations that seek to purvey core facts
02:47about the way in which we organize our societies and live our lives.
02:53The discussion also focused on use of AI in news broadcasts and how it can be a double-edged sword.
03:00I think many of us researchers are really worried about that is how AI can be self-reinforcing
03:08and feeding itself evidence that it's self-generated.
03:11Ms. Purri, too, addressed both the promise and the perils of AI.
03:15We've been using AI in our media business for the last two and a half years.
03:19We do not use it for creating stories.
03:22We call it the AI sandwich, whereas there is human interference or it starts with a human,
03:30may use a bit of AI in the work process and it then ends with a human.
03:34So we have a news magazine.
03:36We've created almost 200 covers using AI.
03:40As one of the world's most recognized news networks,
03:44the India Today group has witnessed and led decades of change,
03:48transformation and innovation on full display at this Towers Roundtable.
03:56Bureau Report, India Today
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