FOLLOW US: @TheStatesmanLtd @thestatesmanltd thestatesman1875 www.thestatesman.com People’s Parliament, Always in Session India’s National Newspaper since 1818 | Pages 16 | ` 5.00 | KOLKATA LC | NEW DELHI | MUMBAI | BHUBANESWAR | LUCKNOW | SILIGURI ‘Tax policy must go beyond sectoral interests’ Page 12 Delhi, Beijing must join hands for global peace NATION Kharge targets Modi over US tariff threat and UPI charges Page 6 Page 9 Media in a mess, veterans debate reasons for crisis SIRSHENDU PANTH Kolkata, 16 September P articipants at a panel discussion on Wednesday agreed that the media now is in a mess, but gave varied opinions on the causative factors for the crisis- from financial problems to the challenges posed by the algorithm-propelled tech space. Moderating the discussion headlined "Media is only responsible for the mess it is in" organised as part of The Statesman Awards for Rural Reporting, 2025 here, the newspaper’s Editor Ravindra Kumar threw probing questions at the glittering panel comprising veteran journalists. "What is the crisis we are looking at? Are we talking of a political mess, business mess, or an advertising mess? Or is it a relevance mess, or mess of credibility?" he asked. Krishna Prasad, former Editor-in-Chief, Outlook, said journalism is in a unique mess, where the media is no longer "seen as pro-people, but virtually against the people". Somewhat taking off from Prasad, Sidharth Bhatia, Founding Editor, The Wire, said a newspaper is expected to provide succour to the poor, fight the rich, challenge the authority, and speak for the voiceless . "This is a job it has miserably failed to do". "But this crisis has been going on for a long time", he said. R. Rajagopal, former Editor, Thursday, 17 September 2026 SPORTS PERSPECTIVE PAGE BUSINESS | The Telegraph, carried the argument further. According to him, the downfall of journalism began in 1992. "Prior to that we saw the golden period of journalism from 1976 to 1992," he said, describing the securities scam as the last great story in Indian journalism. He said, the early 90s saw a sudden explosion of Bollywood and entertainment news and "political stories were looked down upon". That is when the fall started. However, he also felt that the media is now on the cusp of a new golden period. "The new media has some brilliant journalists who are doing an outstanding job despite a resource crunch and lack of reader support." Mukund Padmanabhan, former Editor, The Hindu and The Hindu BusinessLine, however, traced the crisis to the financial weakness that has gripped the media. "Financial strength of media is very important for it to be independent. Media is in some way in a financial crisis. So, media is in a mess," said Padmanabhan. He also said in the age of new media, hateful and spiteful content catches the eyeballs. "This is a big issue". Bhatia felt the future now belongs to the small nimble platforms. "These nimble platforms are the future, but whether they can sustain themselves financially is the question". Giving his prescription to get over the problem, Padmanabhan said the legacy newspapers and television channels need to be restored. ICC T20I rankings: Abhishek rises to No. 2 among batters Page 16 UPI backed by industry leaders as move to sustain digital payments ecosystem ARTI BALI New Delhi, 16 September Industry leaders have backed the government's newly introduced Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) on select UPI merchant transactions, arguing that the charge will help sustain investment in India's digital payments ecosystem and extend UPI's reach to smaller merchants in rural and semi-urban areas. The government set a 0.4 per cent charge on UPI payments above Rs 2,000 to merchants and capped the fee at Rs 300 for payments of Rs 75,000 and above as it rolled out a framework for large digital merchant payments. BillDesk Co-founder and Director Srinivasu M.N. said the fee would be paid by merchants and would largely flow to banks, payment aggregators and other ecosystem participants rather than to the government. "This is a small charge that the merchants will pay, which will largely go to the banking system and to the payment enablers, like payment aggregators and the other participants in the ecosystem," he said, adding that it would help recover investments made over the past four to five years and fund further expansion. MobiKwik Co-founder, MD & CEO Bipin Preet Singh called the move "a positive step towards a more sustainable payments ecosystem," noting that at 0.4 per cent, the new charge remains far below the 1.6-1.8 per cent typically charged on credit-card transactions. Corporate stakeholders opined that the move would create a revenue pool from larger-value merchant payments without changing the payment experience for most consumers and small businesses. A separate survey found 53 per cent of UPI users said they would consider switching to credit cards, debit cards or cash if merchants passed the charge on to them for transactions above Rs 3,000. G ovt reje cts ‘external pressure’ claims over UPI charge s: The Finance Ministry on Wednesday deb unke d the “external pressure” myth that India's decision to introduce a charge on certain high-value UPI merchant transactions was influenced by foreign pressure, saying the country's "UPI policy decisions were taken independently".