By Ranjona Banerji
News channels in India are “famous†within the print media for giving themselves and each other any number of “awardsâ€. They can all therefore simultaneously hold “best channelâ€, “best anchorâ€, “best reporterâ€, “best programme†and best everything titles. It’s even worse than Hollywood in the run up to the Oscars.
But now the time has surely come to constitute a special award from the rest of us journalists to Times Now and Republic TV, for “Best BJP PR and Defence Channelâ€. Ever since the story broke of jeweller or “diamantaire†as he calls himself, Nirav Modi’s unpaid loans of Rs 11,400 crore to Punjab National Bank, there has been much creative thought in these two newsrooms.
How does one protect the Central government from this scam, how does one protect Prime Minister Narendra Modi, how does one blame Jawaharlal Nehru, how does one blame the Congress Party in general, how does one blame Rahul Gandhi and such were burning questions in their newsrooms, I can only assume – judging from the end results. The Man Booker Awards are being discussed one hears, so I would nominate Times Now and Republic TV as worthwhile contenders for best fiction of the year.
Times Now came up with some excellent investigations. They took off from Union “Defend the Prime Minister†Minister Nirmala Sitharaman (sorry, that is her designation, no?)’s superb logic about a landlord being responsible for a tenant’s activities, especially if the landlord belongs to the Congress Party. With such insightful inspiration, how can one go wrong. Senior editor Navika Kumar went through practically every piece of jewellery bought from Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi with a fine toothcomb to check whether anyone with any connections to the Congress party had committed such an anti-national act.
Therefore, as Honourable Minister Nirmala Sitharaman alerted us to the alarming fact that Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi’s wife owned a building in Mumbai where Nirav Modi had an office, Navika Kumar discovered that Singhvi’s wife had bought jewellery from Modi and, gasp, even given her PAN card details while doing so! Can you imagine!
Rahul Shivshankar, editor in chief of Times Now, had to go one further, obviously. He discovered that the Congress party knew in 2015 that Mehul Choksi was going to flee the country and did nothing! Nothing! In 2015!
Republic TV meanwhile, was involved in its own award-winning Dance Sidesteps Competition. They were one up on Times Now with the 2015 story. They found the court order of April 2015, which meant the Congress Party had to take action or something after it was out of power. I always have been mathematically challenged but on another level, isn’t this an insult to the prime minister who became prime minister in 2014? Asking the Congress party to do something in 2015?
The next big “break†on Republic TV was their fine expose of how Nirav Modi was photographed together with Narendra Modi (Honourable Prime Minister) in Davos, in January 2018. The explanation is splendid: Nirav photobombed the PM. This would have worked excellently, except that Nirav is somewhere in the middle of the photograph. A proper photobomber would be on the edges of the posed photograph, thus perhaps proving that Nirav is a better loan defaulter than a photobomber.
In all, both these news channels have worked very hard to blame the Congress party for a scam that has broken now. Some very scant competition has come from the other news channels which have reduced the scam to the usual BJP versus Congress fights on “debatesâ€. They have also all displayed enviable journalistic skills by showing the Prime Minister’s speech to school children live, as the scam was shaking India’s banking system. One must have one’s priorities right, at all times.
In this, a shoutout to Rahul Kanwal of India Today TV for finding one of the whistle blowers of the scam and to Faye D’Souza of Mirror Now for finding Nirav Modi himself in New York, while India’s investigating agencies had no clue. No awards for them, obviously.
None either for the various websites and newspapers who have done absolutely nothing to save the BJP, the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister and any other honourable mentions from this scam.
​Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. The views here are personal​