Ex-CJI: If media fails to retain attention, the truth risks fading into irrelevance

The award is given each year to journalists of Business Standard under 30.

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Delving into the subject of Journalism as the mainstay of democracy, the former CJI said, "Without journalists, society and their members are relegated to an inferior state of awareness and intellect." This is, however, a challenging time for news media, and "journalism's ability to balance truth with attention, ethics with urgency, and integrity with commerce is what will determine the future of democratic discourse," he said.

Describing journalists as one of the oldest content creators, since their jobs often do not stop at collecting facts and publishing them raw, Chandrachud said, "Journalists engage in drawing linkages between facts and subjective perception. They interpret facts from historical and economic perspectives." This is a critical exercise because "the synthesis of raw facts with journalistic interpretation is a quest to uncover truths. The quality of our truths defines the health of our democracy".

Democracy, the former CJI said, assumes that despite differences in opinion, there exists an underlying reality, a set of facts, that shape public discourse. "Journalism has long been the sentinel of this reality, working to uphold truth even as attention becomes the most sought after currency of the digital age." He spoke of how the evolution of media consumption had placed "unprecedented pressure on journalism to compete for attention in an ecosystem dominated by sensationalism, clickbait and viral misinformation".