About Us

RTN Asia was established in 2011 under the name Real Time News.

This new-age journalistic venture focuses on three deliverables:

1. Speed
2. Depth
3. Honesty

Speed & Depth

RTN was founded at a time when online news was anything but speedy. It was founded with a vision to leverage the advantages provided by the new medium — its speed, and the scope of providing in-depth coverage without worrying about running out of space on the page or overshooting the allotted time for the bulletin.

Over the years, we have had a few scores, and a few misses, as far as these two criteria are concerned. But, more than a decade on, our focus still remains on these two key deliverables.

Honesty

The proliferation of digital media, which had democratized access to the journalistic role, has also been accompanied by a dilution of some of the key safeguards and standards that protected this profession from abuse — such as adequate disclosures, telling both sides of the stories, objectivity and so on. Much of the ‘news’ that gets served to us in the new era simply isn’t. Much of it is disguised advertising and what isn’t is often heavily mixed with subjective opinions. Meanwhile, traditional media — which does still hold on to some of the older mores — finds itself unable to compete with the new age ventures which have no scruples about extracting revenue through all kinds of ‘innovative’ means, including by selling editorial space and carrying sponsored articles as if they were news, without any disclosures.

From its initial days, RTN has been an attempt to take the best of both worlds — merge innovation, speed and depth of new media, with the journalistic ethics and code of the old.

Hence, our code of ethics sets us apart from the variety of dotcoms out there. Our code includes — but is not restricted to — the following principles and rules:

• We do not carry sponsored content. All content on this website is editorial content, created by our in-house writers or external contributors. Whether it is written by in-house staff or external contributors, they pass the same checks for authenticity and relevance. In an era where so-called ‘news websites’ carry paid content without even so much as a footnote or disclosure, we have opted for not carrying any such content, whether with disclosure or not. Our staff and contributors are willing to make the required sacrifices.
• RTN, as a platform, has mechanisms in place to ensure that no company, person or government can push any content, either directly or through external contributors or through any other mechanism, in return for payment or favors to suit any agenda other than the journalistic one.
• We do not cheat our readers by either running stories we know are wrong or misleading, or by giving click-bait headlines (over-promising).
• RTN will try and weed out — to the extent humanly possible and achievable — biases in its reports and articles. We remain open to feedback in this respect.