India’s news channels earlier were influenced by open-minded persons such as Dr Pranoy Roy in English and S P Singh (Aaj Tak) in Hindi. Pranoy gave a line-up of stars who are at the centre-stage of news these days — Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Vikram Chandra and Arnab Goswamy. They were initiated when they were in their twenties, and are in the public domain for the last 20 years. After S P Singh’s death, his tradition in Hindi was continued by Uday Shankar ( Aaj Tak and Star News ). Shahi Zaman, Dibang, Naghma and the rest have kept the Hindi channels respectable. Rajat Sharma’s India TV brought true populism to Hindi news.