For this week’s episode, Akademi Mag spoke with Tripti Tandon, Executive Director of the Lawyers Collective. After witnessing the media hysteria around Rhea Chakraborty and the so-called ‘drug ring’ that is Bollywood, we sat down with a practicing lawyer, Tripti, to understand what exactly are India’s current drug policies.

Akademi Mag interviewed Swathi Shivanand from Hate Speech Beda, a collective that works to combat hate speech produced by sections of the press and media. The collective recently published an intensive report titled “Wages of Hate: Journalism in Dark Times” which documents and analyzes the pattern of anti-minority speech in Kannada media. It locates such sensational news coverage with the proliferation of corporate-run media outlets that have rendered journalism largely incapable of dissenting from vested economic interests. It argues that for democracy to flourish, we need robust independent media platforms which can function outside of corporate and political control. Their report primarily looks at Kannada news coverage of COVID-19 and the CAA-NRC protests. The report also states that upper caste domination in Indian media houses heavily contributes to the production of hate speech.You can read the report on Hate Speech Beda’s blog: hatespeechbeda.wordpress.com/2020/09/08/report-wages-of-hate-journalism-in-dark-times/ Consider donating to the collective as it moves towards translating the report for and disseminating it to larger audiences.