MxMIndia

Tag: DailyO

  • What Goswami did is not excusable, writes Ranjona Banerji. He stole an experience to make himself look bigger and braver. All it has done is make him look smaller and sillier

    Arnab Goswami – A Legend in His Own Mind?

     

    B​y Ranjona Banerji

    What an incredible kerfuffle! In a speech he made a couple of years ago, TV anchor Arnab Goswami told a moving story about how he was attacked by riotous mobs carrying trishuls, close to the chief minister’s residence, while covering the Gujarat riots in 2002. Great story​,​ ​but one slight issue with it. The incident did happen. But it did not happen to Goswami. It happened to Rajdeep Sardesai and other colleagues at NDTV.

    Sardesai put the video of Goswami’s speech up on Twitter, expressing surprise at Goswami’s story. The video was taken down and then put up again. Inevitably, minor spats broke out all over Twitter. An employee of Republic TV standing up for her boss, Goswami, posted a photograph where Goswami was part of the group covering the riots. This claim was quickly demolished by Goswami’s former colleagues – he was sent to Gujarat yes but to Kheda and a week after Sardesai’s car was attacked by a mob. The photo was taken later. Several colleagues from NDTV corroborated Sardesai’s assertion that Goswami was lying. Goswami was also defended, or rather Sardesai was attacked, by actor Anupam Kher who occasionally functions as a spokesperson for the government and now also apparently for Goswami.

    What makes someone lie like this? In an article for DailyO, journalist Swati Chaturvedi called Goswami a “fantasist”. On an India Today TV show on the issue, lawyer Sanjay Hegde pointed out, tongue firmly in cheek, that everyone is entitled to be a “legend in their own minds”.

    But what it comes to down to plain and simple is plagiarism. Writers steal words. Those who do not write, steal experiences. Goswami’s story had many personal touches which add verisimilitude – the fear of the driver who had no ID, Goswami’s preference to sit in the front of a car, the sound of the mob. This was a story he must have internalised until it became his own. Perhaps he really believes it happened to him. Maybe he wished it happened to him. Goswami is a studio creation. He was forgettable in his earlier jobs, whatever he did there. He came into his own thundering behind a desk at Times Now.

    Perhaps however he still carries a torch for his non-existent days as an intrepid reporter, covering perilous ground and breaking earth-shattering stories. Since he does not have enough fireside chat experiences of his own, he has no option but to steal the experiences of others. Or maybe he was just borrowing this one: he was going to return it but he forgot: “I covered the riots but not this part that I wanted to cover. So I thought I’d just try your part for a bit to see what it felt like.”

    Of all the roles that journalism offers you, reporting is only one of them. It is not too late for Goswami to become a reporter. He may find it suits him. But he must be more courageous than he has been in the past. Even recently, during one of Mumbai’s super-rainy days, he did not venture very far from his office and stood under a flyover on Tulsi Pipe Road with an umbrella. That is not proper reporting. Nor is going to Milan ​Subway in Santa Cruz.

    He can instead prowl the countryside of Raigad to find any more clues in Sheena Bora’s murder. It may be more dramatic to go at night. And not wear a suit while he does it, although that can be his signature move. He might also lurk around the Leela Palace hotel in Delhi and solve the Sunanda Pushkar case all by himself.

    But let us get down to brasstacks. What Goswami did is not excusable. He stole an experience to make himself look bigger and braver. All it has done is make him look smaller and sillier.

    It has been a while since Goswami stopped practising any type or form of journalism. If he wants to make a comeback, I am not sure that stealing someone else’s experience is the right way to go about it.

    But who knows. This is the “new India”. Anything is possible.

    **

    Meanwhile, it is terrible that one more journalist was brutally killed, this time in the line of duty. Santanu Bhowmick was covering a protest in Tripura when he was abducted and hacked to death by political elements at the rally. This has sadly become all too common – to kill journalists in an attempt to silence the media. Appalling, unacceptable.

     

    ​Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. The views here are personal​

     

  • Let us salute extraneous noise and the power of public opinion on social media, which can make a behemoth notice a pesky ant and change direction, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: How Times & Bachi Karkaria gave in to the God of 140 characters!

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    This column has to be dedicated to the power of Twitter. Or, as Bachi Karkaria, well-known journalist, columnist and noted punster would put it, “extraneous noise”.

     

    The Times Literary Carnival invited Tarun Tejpal as a panellist on the subject of the “Tyranny of power” in the first week of December. Manu Joseph, journalist, was to be the moderator, with journalist, editor, writer and now scriptwriter Basharat Peer and politician Mani Shankar Aiyar as the other participants.

     

    Is there anyone here who has forgotten the Tejpal story from last November? The apology letter from the founder-editor-owner of Tehelka, the “recusing” of himself from the job and the “penance of laceration”, the determination of the young colleague to expose his assault on her, the escalation of events from an admission of sexual harassment (hence the penance blah blah), the private mails made public, the police action on a rape case, the filing of charges?

     

    It did not stop there either. Tejpal evaded arrest, was taken dramatically to Goa and put in jail. Once the lawyers entered the picture, the apology mails were retracted and his accuser was blamed for, well, the usual defence in such cases, asking for it. Collateral damage in all this was the reputation of Tehelka’s managing editor Shoma Chaudhury and Tehelka itself. Certainly one of Indian journalism’s most sordid scandals, except that we have such short memory spans.

     

    Not that it ended there of course. Once Tejpal’s defence was settled on “the victim asked for it” or “why was she in a short dress” or “why did she get into a lift with me”, some attempt at rehabilitation was in order. It began with articles on video footage of the corridor outside the lift where the assault happened. Reams of high flown text on the corridor in defence of Tejpal from Manu Joseph, yes indeed, the man picked as the moderator.

     

    It was apparently Swapan Dasgupta, columnist and good friend and defender of the BJP, who first set Twitter off by pulling out publicly from the “carnival”. The outrage and protests grew on social media. Some people felt that the principles of free speech and presumption of innocence could be applied to the decision to invite Tejpal. Others felt this was just a way to rehabilitate him as a public figure and public “thinker”. And the overwhelming feeling was one of anger that such an attempt was being made at all.

     

    The problem with the presumption of innocence argument is that Tejpal himself apologised, publicly and privately before the matter became a police case. This was not a forced police confession to be retracted in front of a magistrate pleading torture or coercion or seen as inadmissible in law. Add to that the largely unaddressed issue of sexual harassment in media offices – for all our posturing and pointing fingers at other industries – and the problem is magnified.

     

    One assumes therefore that the Times Literary Carnival knew what it was doing when it invited Tejpal as a panellist. And yet it found itself unable to come up with an adequate defence against the anger on Twitter. So Bachi Karkaria, organiser of the literary festival, announced on Twitter that Tejpal had been asked not to attend because the festival did not want “extraneous noise”.

     

    I have discussed the notion of extraneous noise in a piece for the opinion website, DailyO, and will not repeat that here. Instead, let us salute extraneous noise and the power of public opinion on social media, which can make a behemoth notice a pesky ant and change direction. Not a retraction, not a “recusal”, not a “penance that lacerates” but at the very least, a shift in “adamantine resolve”.

     

    The God of 140 characters, I salute you!