 got launched in 1996, to tell the world what is the Arabic viewpoint of the world. Russia today, which is an RT channel, is a very, very lovely channel if you watch outside without having any opinion. But if you are a well-informed person, you know that this side of story is not the only side of story. The secret is to watch Russia today for Wall Street, but not Ukraine, no? Exactly. Yeah, so I'd like to answer to that real quickly, because that was, somehow, it became about RT. First of all, we do quite a bit of coverage on the big stories that happen within Russia. We cover them, and we show, we very much have guests that are very critical of the Russian government. Nobody has gone to jail, not for inviting them, not appearing. We do get that criticism quite a lot, that if you wanted to see what's going on in Russia, you're not going to see it on Russia today. There are two sides to this, or rather two components to this. One is that we're broadcasting globally, and as I said also in my introduction, if we spend so much time covering events within Russia, we're actually not broadcasting for the Russian diaspora. Again, we don't have news in Russian. So if we're broadcasting in India, and in the US, and in Latin America, and all over Europe, and if we want to show the world this different perspective on whatever the issue might be, we have to put together a programming package that is going to be interesting for everybody happening, for everybody watching all around the world, which is why we're not spending so much time on issues within Russia. However, when there are big news stories within Russia that are happening when it was in 2000, early 2010, 2011, Bolotsky Square protests, or the Boris Nemtsov story, RT actually devotes more coverage to that and invites absolutely critical voices, quite a lot of them onto our broadcasts, than pretty much any other international news network covering that. Now within Russia, it's a completely different story. There are publicly funded channels, there are government-owned channels, there are also opposition channels. There's actually extremely lively debate, kind of political debate environment in Russian media, but we're not operating in that world. We're operating in somebody that, you know, our 30-minute segment has to be interesting for 70 million of our weekly viewers, which is a challenge, which is a task, but I absolutely refute the fact that we just, the big political stories that are going on, that we're not gonna say anything critical, we very much have done so and we do so, and we, again, we expect our viewers to make the final call because we're not saying we're the paragon of objectivity, only watch RT, this is the one view of the world. Watch RT, watch the BBC, watch the network that is going to come out, I think eventually absolutely going to come out of India. That's interesting because she says she's throwing it up to the free market forces, you know, you're free to choose within the various brands. What's more democratic than that? Yeah, I found it also very interesting that Russia today has commissioned Pricewaterhouse, which is a scorekeeper of Western capitalism to assess Russia today's impact, so that's very interesting, which means that you're doing it within the acceptable commercial rules, but there's another problem to this whole thing while you're talking international broadcaster, forgive me, across borders in a very, to an informed audience, there's also the challenge of how you talk to the general citizens in an increasingly charged world and I like to bring in Dr. Awad on that because he told me something very disturbing that in the Middle East, the average Arab citizen is subject to all sorts of, you know, slanted news, even on respected brands like Al Jazeera, so I'm very keen to know from Dr. Awad, are we in some kind of diabolical world where the ordinary people hear one thing where a refined version, a sanitized version is presented to the international audience? Thank you, you know, let me make small observation before I say, Anna said in her word in that 60% of the Indian global news are sourced from outside and they have, they broadcast it in India, but I can assure you that the Indian never build up an opinion on a foreign media, not at all. I know that they will attract the story, but they will give their all, but there is also another angle to it, India never been a colonial power. When you are a colonial power, you have ambition in different places in the world where you know there is oil, there is a drug, there is arms sale, then you go around this world to find where you will have your piece of the cake, you take the media with you, you create the ambience, the atmosphere for investment for all. I think these are the two issues. The third issue is when we were in covering news, for example, I mean I lived in South Asia and Southeast Asia for almost three and a half decade, I covered the rest of the world, I covered from Jeff Nutt to Egypt to Yemen. My point was very simple, we were fighting for authenticity of the report. We used to fight, you have to present everything, you have to give on writing. Now you are in a new generation of and you Twitter's, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, so you don't have the authenticity of this reporting is how to check it. And secondly, like a media when we break the media and monopoly of the West in the Arab world like Al Jazeera and Al Arabia, where I used to be a founding member of, I mean of the channel, I'm the South Asia correspondent for them. But then you realize that this become a part of the war propaganda I pulled out because I am not a part to anybody too. This is my country, I know my country how it is reported on Al Jazeera, especially Al Jazeera Arabic. And if you are surprised, Al Jazeera English has been closed in the United States, the reason has to be known for the American, they got sensitive about it. And when we were in Kuwait with the American troops going to Iraq and then Donald Drumsfield, by the way, you must be all surprised to know, insisted on taking Al Jazeera with them to Iraq. And the Kuwait told them that it is banned in Kuwait, we cannot let them in. He insisted on taking, now you wanted to convince me that this channel is reporting news that we really serve the Arab purpose? No, because it has always distorted information and it was digging in the differences among the Arabs because it has the Islamization of the reporters within them. I was in Kabul, I was in Khushabahuddin in Northern Afghanistan, when my colleague from Al Jazeera was in Kabul and he was the only one. And he told me for three years, he is sitting, he is getting frustrated, he doesn't know what to do, he wanted to pull out. Then suddenly they told him, stay on, stay on. So it means you have been told to stay on, there is a war going to happen. So that kind of ambience that you wanted to build up a public opinion and a weapon of mass deception, not a weapon of mass destruction in Iraq. I know correspondent whom they are very famous, whom they are now an international, I don't want to name her. I mean, I can give you the first letter of her name, Christiana Amanpour. She's showing a fourth year student book of mathematics as the nuclear bomb of Iraq or a chemical bomb that this is on CNN, or you are having somebody like Colin Powell appearing on the UN and giving you the weapon of Iraq. I'm sorry, this is not the news reporting, this is manufacturing news. And that is why we will see and what happened in the Arab world. Many of the Arab country have been in Al Jazeera. Despite the fact, 50% of their reporting or above 50 was very reliable, new for the Arab world. We were in NBC, we were the first premium Arabic channel came from London in 1991 and we were giving the news also. But when the war started, the Arab Spring started, both sides went to the other way. They say the truth is the first casualty in any war, irrespective of the level of technology, that seems to be. But is there a way, Rohit, we can get out of this whole manufacturing constant part of the international news issue? Is there any way? I mean, there is no regulator. Sometimes you can go to a local court or a local media regulator for ethical issues in some cases. But when you're broadcasting without borders, even that doesn't seem to exist. How do you think we can resolve this issue? I mean, how would you, what would you do to make sure that your channel will never get stuck with that label of some kind of extended arm of a certain thing where you will not be discounted? No, it's a tough one, I'll be completely honest. The way channels are structured and the way the finances are structured, I've worked for multiple internationals before. I have seen money being paid for sections being bought and interviews being done, objected to those, fought those within the system. The very fact that we allow for paid news to exist, I think it's where the problem lies. It's not as if regulators cannot slam down, they need to come down harshly. If the regulators don't come down on this harshly, it's not gonna happen. But beyond that, I think the audience needs to be educated about it. There is no way an audience would know it's being, you know, a channel's trying to cheat them and will still keep buying that. I think it's time for that era to arrive. If we don't take that action now, I think it's a very, very slippery slope and we'll continue to slide. That's interesting, which brings me to a very interesting perspective. Although we've been talking about TV channels versus TV channels, we forget we are living in the age of social media and mobile media. India already has a billion mobile connections and I've been attending a digital conference this week. We are talking about, you know, 500 million smartphones in India by 2020. So that brings me to Saurav Sukhla who's got a new startup venture called NewsMobile. So can social media and mobile media be a counter? You know, I've always observed that internet is a countervailing influence to quote John Galbraith's famous expression. You know, it can actually keep mainstream media in check. Do you think that is possible? How would you do it? I mean, is there any way you can hurt this whole warning channels to becoming more credible? It already is. You know, if you see the younger generation, they're not really, they're switching away from television. They're actually browsing everything on their mobile devices. And that is where why, you know, outlets like NewsMobile come into play. If you see, I'll give you an example. Recently we had this viral story on the movie Air Lift which became viral even though we did not have the resources to market it, which a big outlet would have, but it didn't go viral because of the content. So I would say increasingly what is happening is that the younger audience, they are embracing digital media more than any other media. You talked about numbers. 6.1 billion smartphones are going to be there globally. And all these smartphones will have a hunger for good quality content. And that is where outlets which are independent. Again, this also adds to it. I would say social media and digital media has actually brought around a democratization of media. Where the entry barrier is low, where you can get it. You can make sure your message is disseminated to the global audience in a manner which was not possible earlier. Now that's interesting. That means we have two layers of democracy in the media. Now one, you have a democracy of nations where we have different national perspectives being voiced on the one hand. And then you have this whole babble of people with mobile phones who can actually join the conversation. It's interesting that sort of mentioned the example of airlift. The movie was reported to have a bias against the Indian government of those times. But on Twitter, you had a whole debate picking out holes in that movie which was based on the airlift of Indians from Kuwait in 1990 to set right the perspectives. But all that leaves us with one big question which I think only Avinash can handle. How much saleable are broadcast, international broadcast channels to advertisers or sponsors? Is just a saleable viable proposition going forward or is this going to be just a luxury like an airline or airline and media businesses are always seen as vanity symbols not as something that will sustain in a market? What is your perspective on this? See, going by the experience of existing international broadcaster, the business is not profitable outside their own country. So if you look at it, CNN makes huge amount of money in North America, in UK and some part of Hong Kong and Singapore from their original broadcast. But the opinion that they divert to the rest of the world what CNN believes in from those countries they don't make so much of money. It's not profitable to work in those markets. For them, if you consider the market PNL, however,