Raghav Bahl, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief

Raghav is a media entrepreneur and investor. In addition to founding and scaling Network18, India’s leading media group, Raghav has seeded moneycontrol.com, bookmyshow.com, firstpost.com, and yatra.com, among others.

Raghav started making television news capsules while still reading Economics at St Stephen’s. After an MBA at FMS Delhi, Raghav's career followed an obvious trajectory, beginning as a Management Consultant at AF Ferguson, followed by a stint at Amex. But news was a natural home for him, and he quit the cushy comforts of international banking and went on to set up Network18, among India’s top media houses. Raghav has also managed long and successful partnerships with some of the world’s leading media brands: CNBC, Viacom, BBC, Star TV, A&E, Time Warner, and Forbes.

As the audience is increasingly shifting out of television and into digital media, Raghav is now focused on scaling an innovative, digital media business — straddling content, tech, and distribution. Raghav founded Quint Digital Media Limited in 2015, which has now been renamed Quint Digital Limited, in order to resonate better with the vision, strategy, and digital focus of the Group.

Ritu Kapur, Co-Founder, CEO, and Managing Director

Ritu is the Co-founder, CEO, and Managing Director of The Quint, an independent news website in India. She has driven digital innovation, from The Quint's innovation Lab to launching a fact-checking initiative, WebQoof, which crowdsources and busts fake news.

Ritu has also strived to provide multiple platforms for free speech, like The Quint's citizen journalism initiative My Report, Talking Stalking — a campaign to change the laws to make stalking a non-bailable offence, and Me, The Change — which focuses on the rights of young women in India.

Ritu spent over two decades in broadcast as the founder of Network18, where she won awards for a docudrama series Bhanwar and for The Citizen Journalist show, among others. At Network18, she led programming on History TV18 and was Features Editor at CNN IBN, before she exited the company to launch The Quint.

She is on the advisory board of Oxford University’s Reuters Institute of Journalism, the World Editor's Forum at WAN IFRA, and Future News Worldwide. Ritu has been recognised by Outlook Business as Woman of Worth 2017 — The Newsmaker.

At the helm, we have some of the best minds in the industry who have honed their craft for years in the media, and today, lead a fearless newsroom. They work with reporters, storytellers, editors, fact-checkers, video and audio producers, designers, product managers, and data analysts to ensure that we fulfil our commitment to fearless and transparent journalism.

Shelly Walia, Executive Editor, The Quint 

Shadab Moizee, Executive Editor, Quint Hindi

Vikas Kumar, Executive Editor, Quint Hindi

Aditya Menon, Editor, Politics

Swati Chopra, Editor, Entertainment 

Abhilash Mallick works as the Editor of the fact-checking team at The Quint. He enjoys working on investigative pieces to identify bad actors spreading disinformation.

Twitter: @Abhilash279
Email: abhilash.mallick@thequint.com

Aishwarya works as a correspondent for WebQoof, The Quint's fact-checking division. She enjoys covering mis/disinformation, debunking viral social media posts, and baking.

Twitter: @AishwaryaVarma
Email: aishwarya.varma@thequint.com

Rujuta's interest in digging into stories has secured her a place in the WebQoof team. Apart from work, she enjoys travelling, exploring new food and culture, and talking about animals.

Twitter: @RujutaThete
Email: rujuta.thete@thequint.com

Abhishek is a part of the WebQoof team at The Quint. When he is not chasing stories or reading up on politics and international relations, he can be found enjoying a game of volleyball or cricket.

Twitter: @anandabhiwrites
Email: abhishek.anand@thequint.com

Khushi is a multimedia journalist and storyteller. Her interests include covering politics and civic issues. 

Twitter: @khushimehrotraa
Email: khushi.mehrotra@thequint.com

Siddharth has 3.5 years of experience as a fact checker. Apart from debunking political fact-checks, Siddharth also enjoys uncovering conspiracy theories and large-scale misinformation-based narratives.

Twitter: @siddharthsarat5
Email: siddharth.sarathe@thequint.com

Faizan Ahmed, Correspondent, Quint Hindi Fact-Check Team Bureaus

Reporters

CURRENT AFFAIRS

Aakriti Handa, Special Correspondent

Himanshi Dahiya, Special Correspondent


POLITICS, COMMUNALISM, and CASTE

Eshwar Gole, Associate Editor, News

Aliza Noor, Principal Correspondent


GENDER

Pratikshya Mishra, Principal Correspondent

CLIMATE CHANGE & HEALTH

Anoushka Rajesh, Principal Correspondent, Health

SPORTS

Shuvaditya Bose, Principal Correspondent, Sports


WORLD and INDIAN DIASPORA

Sakshat Chandok, Senior, The Quint World

Our super cool team of video editors focuses on producing video explainers, stand-ups, news packages, concept videos, fake-news debunking videos, and a lot more in long- and short-form formats.

Zijah Sherwani is a seasoned media professional with a decade of experience, including over five years at The Quint. As a creative director and multimedia journalist, Zijah combines a journalistic eye with creative finesse to produce impactful video content. Her work spans from in-depth documentaries to engaging social media features, covering a wide range of topics from political and social justice to cultural narratives. She leads The Quint's videos team, collaborating with reporters and editors to push creative boundaries and experiment with formats and styles. In 2023, Zijah was honoured with a Red Ink Award in the Human Rights category and was named a finalist in the SOPA Awards for Excellence in Journalistic Innovation.

One of the cornerstones of The Quint is that we constantly strive to find ways to make editorially important stories more engaging for our readers and viewers. The Quint Lab, our in-house department that focuses on innovations in journalistic storytelling, leads the charge on this. From multimedia immersives to interactive data visualisations, from live infographics to interactive graphic novels, The Quint Lab does all of this and more.  The cross-functional team comprises multimedia producers, a UI/UX designer, graphic designers, product managers, and a web developer.

The Graphics team helms all graphic design work at The Quint — creating illustrations, featured images, graphic novels, motion graphics, and animation. The team also makes custom creatives that shape The Quint’s visual identity on the site and on social media platforms. 

Aroop Mishra, Head, Graphic Design

Zijah Sherwani, Creative Director

Naman Shah, Senior Assistant Editor, The Quint Lab

Our Social Media Team works across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Telegram, and other social media platforms. The audience engagement specialists work round the clock, along with the WebQoof team, to identify fake news online.

By the way, if your family WhatsApp group is buzzing with those fake forwards, you can send it to our WebQoof team at +919540511818 and we will revert with fact-checked and credible content.

The Quint’s podcasts are available to be tuned in across 24 distribution platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. Starting with just two shows — The Big Story and Urdunama — in 2017, The Quint’s podcasters now have to their credit several scripted and unscripted podcasts on a range of topics, including books, movies, mental health, meditation — and even original stories of life, love, and loss.

Prateek Lidhoo, Senior Podcasts Producer

As a part of the company policy, team members are not allowed to be directly or indirectly involved with any political party or candidate. Additionally, team members must not be involved directly or indirectly in any kind of political activity like advocating or campaigning for any political party or candidate, or public expressions of their personal political preference (like sticking banners in their houses, displaying political stickers or slogans on their vehicles, etc.).Furthermore, team members are prohibited from contesting or accepting any appointment or association of whatsoever nature with any public office.

The process of fact-checking ranges from ground reporting to calling various stakeholders and authorities to verify facts, reverse searches, and analysing various parts of a message for a detailed response.
We have sent our reporters on the ground many times to verify news stories, thus preventing misinformation from spreading. One of the examples is the time of the Kathua rape case. Our reporter travelled to Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir to verify and bring out the facts. We also rely on personal interaction with concerned parties to verify messages pertaining to them. For instance: For various messages about government schemes — when the details are not available on government websites — we write/call the concerned ministry/department for clarification.

Since the messages that we receive range from text messages to videos, the way we handle them differs.

We have a strict policy of non-partisanship. While selecting a story for fact-checking:

1. We assess the impact that fake post can have — is it likely to instigate violence? Can it harm anyone? What will be the implications if it goes viral?
2. We assess the kind of damage it can do. In certain cases, posts can incite violence or can make an already sensitive situation worse, we prioritise based on the repercussions it can have.
3. We check the vitality. In some cases, the most innocuous posts, which are viral, can mislead/misinform people.
4. Misinformation is parallel to the news cycle, we also focus on breaking news events and news cycles to ensure that we fact-check and debunk narratives and falsehoods around that.

Some images can be identified as having been tampered with by doing a simple Google reverse search. As the result shows similar images, they can be identified as being fake or not. Secondly, a closer look at images helps in analysing certain aspects of the photo, which reveals details that help in checking the authenticity of the image. For instance, details in images like billboards and location play a role in verification.

Verifying videos can be tricky but both the audio and the visuals play a role in verifying them. For instance, a message was circulating on social media claiming that a raid was conducted on a dhaba near Delhi and the condition of the kitchen was extremely poor and unhygienic. But on watching the video, we found it to be false. What helped us verify it was the audio. People in the video were talking in Punjabi, while the video was claimed to be from Haryana. Afterwards, using the language as a clue, we found the same video online. It was not just from a different location but was also quite old.

For text, we pursue cues and look for the information online, then further analyse the source and verify the text bit by bit.

There are different methodologies adopted for different stories, but we maintain a policy of not relying blindly on popular sources of information until we are sure about the information that we put forward.

This is the link to our WebQoof section, where we stack all the stories that we debunk: https://www.thequint.com/news/webqoof.

Owning up to any error quickly and completely, and being transparent when correcting a factual error — that’s our mantra. Therefore, as a professional organisation, while we endeavour to work with flawlessness and accuracy, we are also mindful of the fact that mistakes need to be corrected promptly. 

Corrections, clarifications, and retractions are to be noted online and printed in the next available issue, in a regular, consistent space that is easy for the reader to find in the front of the publication or, in the case of a website, the home page. Serious factual errors are to be admitted and corrected at the first opportunity, subject to legal advice where appropriate. No Team Member is allowed to commit the Company to an admission of error, correction, or apology without reference to the Department Head. The Department Head along with the Company lawyers must be consulted about the wording of corrections and clarifications to determine their suitability.

We admit and correct any serious factual errors at the first opportunity, subject to legal advice where appropriate. Any amendment is notified at the bottom of an article. If a retraction is needed, it is accompanied by an explanation as to why it was felt to be necessary, subject to the approval and discretion of the Editor-in-Chief and senior editors.

See something that seems off? You can reach out to our Grievance Officer, Nidhi Mahajan, at grievance@thequint.com.

As part of company policy and code of conduct, employees are required to sign an undertaking that clearly states that they are not directly or indirectly involved with any political party or candidate.

Team members must not be involved directly or indirectly in any political activity, such as advocating or campaigning for any political party or candidate or public expressions of their personal political preference (like sticking banners in their houses, displaying political stickers or slogans on their vehicles, etc.).

Team members are prohibited from contesting or accepting any appointment or association of whatsoever nature with any public office.

You can contact The Quint's fact-checkers, Team WebQoof, at webqoof@thequint.com or through our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Have a suggestion or feedback on our stories or editorial projects? Write to us at editor@thequint.com. Other ways to contact us are noted here.