An Adarsh Balak cartoon for the ages (via https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/elm1rs/so_relevant_again/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)

Since I have your attention, here are 7 cognitive fallacies that you should keep a watch out for, or point out to anyone who consumes those daily primetime octopanel shoutmatches as "news".

1. False Choice: Also known as the "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" trick. Hosts will regularly invite a panelist and frame a question that is impossible to answer without agreeing to something you disagree with, in the first place. Example:

2. False Equivalence: Also known as the "both sides did bad things" trick. When the JNU violence broke out and TV debates invited both sides and splashed "Clashes erupt" graphics all over and framed the debate that way, they've already biased the audience away from reality...

If you give equal airtime to "both sides" in the face of a mountain of freely available evidence that implicates one side, you are not being a journalist. You are being a boxing match promoter.

3. The "Many say" trick. Hosts will regularly say something completely biased and justify it by prefixing it with "Many say" simply as a way of making it seem like it's not their bias but some amorphous, unknown public consensus. Ignore anything that comes after a "Many say..."

4. The "Sources say" trick. Hosts will often attempt to pass off something completely unverified by prefixing it with "Sources say" and refuse to disclose where or how they got their information. Treat anything that comes after a "Sources say..." with extreme skepticism

5. The "Don't politicize this" trick. Hosts will regularly shut down one side by asking the panelist to "not politicize" something after spending an entire hour politicizing the issue themselves. Please hear "Don't politicize this" as "I don't care for your politics"

6. The "Poisoning the well" trick. For the last few years, several TV news channels have "debated" alleged sedition & anti-national behaviour at JNU while flashing seizure-inducing graphics that have phrases like "Tukde tukde", "Anti national lobby" etc...

Forget journalism, this is not even acceptable in high school. Imagine a school debate where the podium that one side is supposed to talk from has a poster in front that only the audience can see, and it reads "Don't trust this speaker". That's what they are doing

and finally 7. The "Arnab" trick, which is to use decibels as a cudgel against an argument he doesn't like. Always remember that it's the TV channel sound guy who has full control over every single panelists' mic volume. It's a cheap trick.

Panel debates aren't journalism. They are WWE matches. Investigative reporting is journalism. Don't trust it blindly, but you can independently verify what is presented there. The information content of a prime time debate is something glorious ancient India invented - zero.