Audiences aren’t always right, but the reasons for the audience being wrong are complex, and that’s especially true with the toxic relationship between Indian audiences and the news media they consume, or at least the way While We Watched portrays that relationship. It’s understandable that your average Indian media consumer wants a narrative instead of ‘boring’ journalism. Indian journalists, or the majority of them anyway, are feeding audiences propaganda as a wat for those audiences to neglect the realities of government incompetence.
Journalism is sacred, at least it is in a just world, and Ravish Kumar is one of the people who believes in a just world. He’s the news anchor at NDTV, hosting a prime time show. That’s not the only thing that he does though, he also hosts events at university telling people that there are things important in Indian society, more important than ‘nationalism’. Of course he can’t ignore national politics, having to cover an election that may give the incumbent president more power.
While We Watched has a few things that are keeping it from being great, including and most importantly that it needs to take a step back and include more angles on the story which, surprisingly, in this case, may help the documentary get its point across. There’s an opportunity here to compare Indian news to its international versions to show how the former pushes Modi’s cult of personality. The film may not be perfect but the man it’s about is very good.
- Release Date: 9/11/2022
