Primetime Debates: Death of Democracy

India is home to 1.4 billion people and the largest democracy on the planet. In a country of that scale, the media carries an enormous responsibility. It has the power to inform citizens, shape public discourse, influence what issues dominate the national conversation, and, in some cases, even affect electoral outcomes.

So when prime time arrives, what are we subjected to?

Not journalism. Not reporting. Not information.

Instead, we get live screaming matches disguised as intellectual debate.

Six people appear on screen. The anchor plays the role of "moderator." Within minutes, the discussion descends into chaos. Everyone talks over everyone else. Facts become secondary. Nuance disappears. The person who shouts the loudest gets the most airtime, regardless of whether they have anything meaningful to say. More often than not, the anchor isn't moderating the discussion at all—they're simply another participant with a microphone and a larger platform.

And yet this format dominates Indian television news.

The media establishment would like us to believe these debates are an essential part of democracy. They are not. They are television theatre. They are designed to generate outrage, drive ratings, and keep viewers glued to their screens. Whether they actually inform the public seems almost irrelevant.

The question of who the media truly serves is a much larger discussion—one involving political influence, corporate interests, advertising revenue, and access journalism. That is a conversation for another day.

What concerns me here is how this pathetic debate format has completely taken over Indian prime-time news, and how we have somehow accepted it as normal.

Since the early 2000s, when anchors like Arnab Goswami helped popularise the confrontational debate format, television news has steadily moved away from reporting and toward performance. Rather than reducing the number of debate shows, channels have doubled down on them. Today, many networks run debates almost continuously from 5 p.m. until 11 p.m.

That's six hours of shouting.

Six hours of accusations.

Six hours of political talking points.

And very little actual news.

Prime-time news should be a space where citizens are informed about what happened during the day. It should explain government decisions, examine their consequences, highlight important developments around the country, and provide context for events happening around the world. It should help viewers understand the issues that affect their lives.

Instead, we are presented with self-proclaimed political analysts, strategists, and party spokespersons whose primary objective is not to inform the audience but to push their own agendas. Every issue becomes a partisan battle. Every discussion becomes a contest of loyalty rather than a search for truth.

The debate format, at least in its current form, deserves to die.

I don't want sixty minutes of carefully crafted editorial narratives that subtly favour one political party over another. I don't want to spend my evenings filtering facts through a panel of professional outrage merchants who insist that the country is perpetually on the brink of collapse because of whichever ideology they happen to oppose.

I want the news.

I want reporting.

I want facts.

I want journalists on the ground. I want experts, professors, economists, scientists, diplomats, and people with genuine expertise explaining complex issues to the public. I want context instead of confrontation.

Because the only thing worse than an uninformed electorate is a misinformed one.

A democracy cannot function properly when citizens are fed half-truths, propaganda, and endless partisan narratives. An electorate that only hears one side of every story is not empowered—it is manipulated.

There is one mainstream news bulletin that still attempts to do things the old-fashioned way. It focuses on reporting rather than spectacle. Ironically, it airs at 10 p.m., long after the prime-time slots have been consumed by debate shows. The fact that genuine journalism has been pushed to the margins while shouting occupies centre stage says a great deal about the priorities of modern television news.

Perhaps what makes all of this even more frustrating is that I am not writing as a detached observer. I am writing as a journalist who has played a role—however small—in producing these very programmes. I have seen how these debates are assembled. I have watched the machinery operate from the inside. And that experience has only strengthened my belief that we can do better.

In fact, we must do better.

I refuse to believe I am in the minority. Most people do not come home after a long day hoping to watch six strangers scream at each other on television. Most people simply want to know what happened, why it matters, and how it affects them.

It's time we stopped rewarding outrage.

It's time we stopped confusing noise with journalism.

And it's time we started demanding that news channels do the one thing they were created to do: tell us the news.

Until then, all I can hope for is change.