News Broadcasting
Salman-Ash tapes: How many had them?
NEW DELHI: Bollywood hero Salman Khan’s alleged dalliances with the underworld, which, reportedly led to an acrimonious separation from his arm candy and former world beauty queen Aishwarya Rai, not only made Hindustan Times’ Mumbai debut much talked about, but also gave TV news channels some spicy stuff to follow up on 14 July.
Even as news channels clamoured to put together a story, which was broken by HT yesterday, at least two of the channels claimed to be first with the news on the small screen, including visuals.
What is more surprising is that some of the news channels also claimed to be in possession of the tape (conversation between Salman and Ash) on the basis of which HT lead with a story in its inaugural Mumbai edition.
“We had the tape for some time, but held it back from airing it as we were doing some more investigation,” Jagran TV COO Piyush Jain told Indiantelevision.com today. Ditto for India TV chairman Rajat Sharma, who said, “We anyway have done controversial stories in the past and as usual wanted to verify the veracity of the Salman-Ash tape before putting it out.”
The Mumbai police has now gone on record saying the tape would be investigated as also the alleged connection of the underworld with Bollywood. Salman’s lawyer has dubbed the tape a ‘doctored’ one as Salman is a “soft target” for people with vested interests.
If, as claimed by two news channels, they had the tape, why did they wait for HT to show them the way? Explained Jain, “We were doing some additional investigations to be 100 per cent sure of the facts. When HT broke the story, we thought we might as well put out the story.”
Though by early afternoon most news channels had started running stories on the alleged Salman-Ash-underworld affair, how did the news channels acquire a copy of the tape is itself a mystery. Nobody is ready to admit the source.
“We haven’t given any news channels any tape, though it’s nice of some TV news channels to give us the credit,” HT Mumbai resident editor Avirook Sen said.
While Star News acknowledged HT’s contribution in breaking the story even though later in the day doing its “own value additions,” HT’s Sen appeared on a NDTV channel for a programme hosted by Abhigyan Prakash.
Meanwhile, Indiantelevision.com has learnt that the HT correspondent who broke the story actually had been working on the matter for some months when he was, reportedly, working for a TV news channel. The tape was in his possession since then. And, then the journalist hopped over to HT in Mumbai taking along with him the tape and the story that had all the ingredients of a Bollywood potboiler.
The rest, as they say, is history!
Still, what is rather odd about this whole affair is that the “leak” of the tapes has been to more than one media outlet. While answers are not forthcoming at present over why the Mumbai police “sat over” the matter for over four years, it is also clearly evident that more than one party that had access to the tapes have been sitting on it for varying periods of time.
Mumbai eveninger Afternoon Despatch & Courier put forth an interesting point in its Diary column today: “If, indeed, Salman does know the underworld as closely as he claims, and he is truly their main man in Mumbai, then where is the wisdom in letting him run around loose and unchecked? Are the police sitting on the tapes because they want to use them at a later and appropriate date? Perhaps, to their own advantage? Or do the police know that the tapes are not genuine, after all, but are enjoying the tamasha of the media carrying out this witch-hunt against a star they have never really liked?”
Questions, questions…
News Broadcasting
Newsrooms rethink AI, trust and revenue models
Editors and tech leaders debate tools, deepfakes and viability.
MUMBAI: If yesterday’s newsroom ran on caffeine and chaos, tomorrow’s may well run on code but with a human still holding the pen. At the 22nd edition of the Video Broadcast and Broadband Tech Summit hosted by IndianTelevision.com, some of the sharpest minds in Indian media gathered to examine how artificial intelligence, automation and shifting audience behaviour are reshaping journalism. The session, titled The Newsroom of Tomorrow Tools, Trust, and Business Viability In Focus, did not descend into techno-utopian hype. Instead, it wrestled with a more uncomfortable question: how do you stay relevant, credible and profitable when the audience is changing faster than the headline cycle?
The panel featured Govindraj Ethiraj, Editor of The Core, Dr Nilesh Khare, COO of Sakal Media Group; Prakaran Tiwari, Chief Executive Producer at NDTV Profit; Manoj Padmanabhan, Head of Business Media and Entertainment at AWS; Neeraj Mishra, Key Account Manager at Vizrt and session chair; and Mayuresh Konnur, Bilingual Correspondent at Collective Newsroom, publisher for BBC in India.
Govindraj Ethiraj set the tone with a frank assessment. “The reason people do not consume as much news through us is because they are consuming news through other sources they trust more,” he said. In a fragmented ecosystem flooded with content, trust has become the real differentiator.
Yet AI is undeniably transforming workflows. Ethiraj admitted he now uses AI tools to proofread his own articles. “Sometimes it is scary how much it picks, but it helps,” he said. What once required layers of sub-editing can now be assisted by machines trained to flag errors, inconsistencies and structural weaknesses.
He pointed to how newsroom roles have evolved. The desk editor, widely advertised over the last 15 years, barely existed in its current form before the internet boom. As digital publishing accelerated, tasks such as curating listicles, ranking stories and optimising headlines became specialised functions. Now, many of those responsibilities can be performed or at least supported by AI systems. The disruption is not hypothetical; it is operational.
Dr Nilesh Khare approached the issue from both a business and technological standpoint. Sakal Media Group is developing its own large language model, built on 60 years of text and photo archives. The goal is independence. “We won’t need to depend on other platforms to develop ours,” he said, underscoring the strategic value of proprietary data.
For Khare, AI represents opportunity as much as anxiety. It can help expand content across geographies and languages, particularly in bridging North and South Indian markets. It can streamline production and reduce costs. He did not shy away from the implications. “As a journalist I feel bad but as a content producer I feel good that we will require less manpower,” he said, articulating a tension many in the room recognised but few openly admit.
He also highlighted how audience behaviour is evolving. Today, a retail investor can follow a stock using Gemini or GPT instead of toggling between multiple news channels. News is no longer consumed linearly; it is queried, personalised and synthesised. The newsroom must therefore produce content that survives not just on screens but within AI-generated summaries.
Prakaran Tiwari offered a more philosophical reflection. “AI has developed itself and adapted on the basis of how news is consumed. It’s all about giving a perspective,” he said. In his view, the competitive edge will not lie in speed alone but in interpretation. Facts are increasingly commoditised; context is not.
He also suggested that formats are fluid. While short-form video dominates social feeds, long-form audio is resurging. Govindraj Ethiraj noted that in the United States the 2024 election was described as the “podcast election”, reflecting how audiences are investing time in deeper, long-form discussions. The newsroom of tomorrow must cater to both scrolling and sustained listening.
Manoj Padmanabhan of AWS reframed the debate. Technology, he argued, is not an existential threat but an amplifier. “The power is given to the human journalist with all this technology in their hand, with it acting as a support or assistant to deliver the correct and relevant news to the people,” he said.
The traditional divide between a “normal” newsroom and a “digital” newsroom is fading. “It will not be two newsrooms,” he said. “It will be one newsroom.” In that integrated environment, the storyteller remains central. AI may assist with research, editing and distribution, but editorial judgement remains human.
Neeraj Mishra of Vizrt echoed the assistive narrative. India, he said, is a market of organised chaos, where news broadcasters are pushing ever-increasing volumes of content. AI will help manage scale. It is not here to replace people but to assist them.
Production barriers are already collapsing. “You don’t need a green screen to produce content now,” Mishra observed, hinting at virtual production tools and real-time rendering technologies. And this, he said, is only the beginning. In a cost-conscious market like India, AI adoption in both B to B and B to C segments is likely to rise sharply. The skills are available, he argued, the real question is whether organisations are willing to invest.
If opportunity was one half of the conversation, risk was the other. Mayuresh Konnur warned that fake news is now being peddled with alarming ease using AI tools. Deepfakes, synthetic audio and fabricated visuals can damage credibility overnight. Several journalists, he said, have already faced instances where manipulated content was circulated in their name.
“Eventually it becomes a question of how authentic you are in the market,” Konnur noted. In a crowded information economy, credibility is the ultimate moat. Regulations and clear guidelines, he argued, are necessary to curb misuse without stifling innovation.
Mishra added a note of caution against overuse. “AI should not be everywhere. It has to be used optimally,” he said. The value lies not in blanket automation but in strategic integration.
One of the most resonant metaphors came from Padmanabhan. AI, he suggested, is like a brush in a human hand. Powerful, versatile, transformative but inert without the artist. It cannot survive without the human touch.
Konnur distilled the session’s core takeaway, AI is inevitable, but the art of storytelling will never disappear.
In a media landscape defined by speed, shrinking attention spans and intense competition, the newsroom of tomorrow is not simply a technological upgrade. It is a recalibration. Between efficiency and ethics. Between automation and authenticity. Between reducing manpower and retaining meaning.
The algorithms may write cleaner copy and generate sharper graphics. They may even predict what audiences want before audiences know it themselves. But the enduring task remains unchanged to tell stories that inform, interrogate and inspire.
And for that, the human newsroom is still very much open for business.
