By Ranjona Banerji
In India’s currently tottering democracy, as we know well, freedom of speech and expression applies only to hate-filled divisive content. Abuse Muslims, women, Dalits, religions in a minority in India and so on, and you will be supported by the government, by both-sides-now liberals and the large world of BJP supporters. Everyone else who exercises free speech has a good chance of harassment, trolling or jail as a dissenter and anti-national terrorist.
So with impunity and right wing BJP gusto, Arnab Goswami’s Republic world of toxicity is the most popular TV channel in India, beating established toxic “news” channels like Aaj Tak et cetera.
However, weirdly, other democracies are aware of and unaccepting of “hate speech”. And so poor Goswami, who blares out his disgusting bombast night after night, in English and Hindi, finds suddenly that not everyone is on his side.
In a programme aired on September 6, 2019, Goswami made the following remark (amongst several other contentious ones), with reference to Pakistan: “We make scientists, you make terrorists.”
Gaurav Arya, a consulting editor with Republic TV added his own bile: “Their scientists, doctors, their leaders, politicians all are terrorists. Even their sports people. Every child is a terrorist over there. Every child is a terrorist. You are dealing with a terrorist entity”.
Read that again, if you are unfamiliar with of Republic TV’s vile rubbish: ‘Every child is a terrorist over there. Every child is a terrorist”.
Every child.
What is the extent of cynical hatred being regurgitated here? People argue that Goswami is a sweet angel of mercy in real life who turns into a termagant on television but that is specious and despicable reasoning. What he says on TV counts and the United Kingdom at any rate flagged Goswami’s words and that of his panellists and guests as “hate speech”.
1. The UK’s regulatory body, the Office of Communications has fined Goswami and his channel 20,000 pounds and imposed sanctions on the channel. It also demanded an apology.
https://scroll.in/latest/982046/uk-communications-regulator-sanctions-arnab-goswamis-programme-fines-republic-bharat-rs-19-73-lakh
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0030/209748/Sanction-Decision-Worldview-Media-Network-Limited.pdf
Having been so brave as to spread sectarian hatred, war mongering and Islamophobia, to keep the BJP’s anti-minority fires burning, Republic TV then apologised:
“The Licensee also informed Ofcom that it broadcast an apology to “redress the breaches” and “convey our regret to all our viewers”. It said that the apology was broadcast “a total of 280 times between 26 February 2020 and 9 April 2020, at all hours of the day.”
https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/arnab-goswami-beat-savarkar-anchor-ridiculed-after-revelation-that-channel-apologised-to-uk-body-280-times
Actually, this doesn’t cut it.
This apology is for commercial reasons and to keep its reach in the UK and its large pro-BJP Indian diaspora. The flames of Hindu supremacy and minority hatred have to be kept alive at any cost to promote Narendra Modi and the RSS, and for that a meaningless apology is definitely worth it.
Remember the programme was aired in September 2019, the apology made according to the channel between February and April 2020. No one has ever mentioned it until now, so who knows what was actually aired 280 times. Also remember that Republic TV’s hateful rubbish has not ceased and Goswami, his employees and his guests continue with their tone.
It is important also to remember that the vicious attacks on Rhea Chakraborty started after Sushant Singh Rajput’s death in June 2020, so clearly no lessons learnt or even intended to be learnt.
The only significance is the fact that Republic TV’s hate has been flagged in other democracies. Whereas in India, Goswami gets high level Central government and BJP party support whenever he is crossed.
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The credibility collapse of India’s traditional mainstream media has been emphatically highlighted by India’s protesting farmers. They have refused to speak to reporters from channels like Republic, Aaj Tak and Zee. And now their supporters have come out with their own newspaper, Trolley Times, to combat the lies being spread about them.
This beautiful article by Priya Ramani gives us the people and the thought behind Trolley Times and its growing success.
https://www.bloombergquint.com/opinion/trolley-times-the-countrys-fastest-growing-newspaper
What a well-deserved slap in our collective faces.
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Meanwhile, Happy Christmas!!
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. Her views here are personal