Tag: Times Now

Time to #Reject Arnab

By Pradyuman Maheshwari

In 2008, well before 26/11 or the Mumbai terror attack, I had written that Arnab Goswami is a lot better than Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt (and of course a host of other stars on NDTV). He asked the tough questions, he spoke for you and me. There were no holy cows in his book then.

Around November 26, he did the smart thing of sticking around the studio and not getting out on the field. Whether it was because he feared for his life or whether it was by intent, it worked well for the channel because it had its best man in the studio helping in the packaging of the channel.

Over the years though, the success has got him to turn arrogant on television. If you don’t agree with his line of thinking, even the gods won’t be able to save you. If we thought that Karan Thapar would heckle his guests and often speak more than the people he was quizzing, Arnab takes this art to an all-new level. He just doesn’t allow them to speak beyond half a sentence.

He’s aggressive. He’s offensive. Sadly, he’s also repulsive.

But all of that has worked for the channel and him. He attracts maximum ratings and political leaders love to be on his show because it gives them great visibility.

Ad spots on his show are a few x times more expensive than those on some other English news channels. It’s all going right for the man. And his channel.

But many of us find him crossing the limits for a few years now. The problem with Arnab is that he doesn’t believe in half-measures. He goes on the rampage. I would like to not offer any analogies with the behaviour of other beings, but anyone who comes in his way, is mauled.

Bottomline: Arnab is getting obnoxious. And needs to be tamed soon. If the The Times of India group doesn’t do it, the law-enforcers could.

Ideally of course he should be subjected his fate by viewers who could reject his channel and watch others. But, then, the alternatives aren’t energetic enough. So there are many who still consider him the best of the lot. Plus it’s entertainment. Since the next season of Bigg Boss is still some months away, Newshour is the show everyone loves to watch. There the inmates scream at each other, here the studio guests do that. And so does the master of ceremonies: Arnab Goswami.

Now, as Ranjona Banerji writes alongside, even his lieutenants are doing it.

On the evening after India was humbled by Australia in the semi finals of the 2015 World Cup Cricket, after various elements on social media had converted their dismay to jokes and jibes, one would’ve expected an Oxford-educated Arnab to put things in perspective and not fuel the cause of the lumpen elements.

But what we saw was an unnecessary whipping up of nationalistic passion. Stuff that we can do without. Time to Reject Arnab. Let’s hashtag it, as he loves to do. #RejectArnab

No longer any connection to journalism

By Ranjona Banerji

Ding dong ding dong… hear that? It’s the death knell of journalism being rung in India thanks to Times Now. That Times Now is on a collision course with both good sense and reality is well known. But did the new channel reach the end game on Thursday, March 26, after India lost in the semi-final of the Cricket World Cup against Australia in Sydney? The answer could well be “yes”.I can safely say that I have never been as appalled with a pair of journalists in 30 years in the profession as I was with the display that Anand Narasimhan and Tina Sharma Tiwari put up on television after the semi-final. People reacted with so much anger to their “#ShamedAtSydney” hashtag running across the screen that #ShameonTimesNow was soon trending on Twitter and continued to do so up to Friday morning.

Fans react with irrational anger when their favourite team or player loses. But for journalists to outdo badly behaved fans deserves the strongest condemnation. Not only were the two anchors foaming and frothing at the mouth but they seemed unable to distinguish between their roles and that of a fan ready to burn an effigy. It almost seemed as if they were egging fans on to misbehave; and suggesting that any such behaviour was justified.

Some of the panellists on Times Now just after the loss, like Charu Sharma, Atul Wassan and later Zaheer Khan tried to inject reason and sense into the discussion. But neither the anchors nor Saad Bin Jung were having any of it. For them, India capitulated, Dhoni should have cried like AB De Villiers of South Africa, Kohli was distracted by Anushka Sharma’s presence and the team played like “stupid amateurs”.

The trouble is that all these are believable as reactions from loony fans. Not from journalists who are either supposed to report on proceedings or, as in the case of TV, ask other people to analyse them. The spectacle of Narasimhan and Sharma-Tiwari screeching at the guests was unedifying and appalling. The two of them are supposed to be sports journalists but there was no semblance of any understanding of sport visible from them. Narasimhan had a mega tantrum over the rights of fans versus sense and Sharma-Tiwari had her own hissy fit about Dhoni’s apparent lack of emotion at the loss – as determined by her.

What viewers might have wanted to see was some analysis of what went wrong. The panellists on the side of reason (the wrong side as far as Times Now was concerned) argued that the Indian team had played well so far, mentioned how well Australia had played, pointed out that there was no reason for the Indian players to purposely play badly. But the anchors were having none of it.

The defining moment for me was Sharma-Tiwari questioning the lack of application by the Indian players. The irony was that neither she nor Narasimhan showed any application to the tenets of journalism. It is tempting to blame Times Now’s editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami for this behaviour. By manipulating The Newshour as his personal soapbox, he appears to have encouraged his staff to become rabble rousers and instigators. Even if he did not instruct either of them to behave in this manner, he has clearly inspired them. I did not watch Goswami himself on Thursday because I had had enough of the channel by then. But my colleague Pradyuman Maheshwari had his own share of heart attacks watching The Newshour.

I have defended Times Now and Goswami before, if only because I felt he had a finger on the pulse. But I fear that I have to concede defeat. Times Now may provide entertainment of the lowest and basest kind but it no longer has any connection to journalism.