About Sonia Bhaskar
Having worked for nearly three decades in the broadcast and digital journalism space, 25 years out of which were with NDTV (New Delhi Television), Sonia Bhaskar has had a ringside view of the rapid transition in the media space. The opportunity to work in diverse roles spanning reporting, editorial, production, tech integration and product development, Sonia has not only had to adapt to the fast evolving technologies, emergence of social media and its all round impact, but also had to diversify, develop skills to cater to different mediums and forms of storytelling, content creation and distribution. Being part of the Google News Initiative Trainer Network since 2018, introduced Sonia to the challenges of misinformation/disinformation, and she has been training newsrooms and journalism students in fact-checking, verification and AI literacy since then. She also headed the Shakti Collective - a consortium of 100+ newsrooms and fact-checking organisations in 2024 to tackle election related misinformation, disinformation and deepfake detection. Currently, she is a guest lecturer and mentor at Indian Institute of Mass Communication and working on various digital safety and online wellbeing initiatives as Senior Programme Coordination Consultant at the Centre for Social Research (CSR).