By Aditya Aamir
NDTV also stings. Till the other day it was thought stings are only Cobrapost. But NDTV anchor Nidhi Razdan wants Prime Minister Narendra Modi to hold a press conference, “like prime ministers of all democratic countries hold.” This after Modi gave an “email interview” to questions newspapers mailed.
“It’s not the Prime Minister answering, it’s some PR guy in the government’s pay. How can the PM give similar answers to the same question from Times of India and the Hindustan Times?” Razdan asked Arati Jerath, another critic of Modi’s style of handling the media.
Arati and Nidhi are friends. Normally, journalists don’t become pals. Got to do with egos. But anti-Modi-ism has made strange bedfellows, and pillow-talk is now a journalistic phenomenon. If Razdan cannot stomach “similar answers”, Jerath is pissed off that TOI and HT took the “Modi email-interview” and spread it around like confetti. “Le Monde did not,” she said. Razdan agreed, “Yes, Le Monde did not.”
In all ‘Left, Right and Centre’ episodes, Arati or somebody with a similar to Nidhi Razdan-ideological bent gets the “last word”. Nidhi is beautifully unaware it is her tendency to give the last word to “Arati”, “Manish” and “Shergill” and not to “Sambit”, “Gaurav Bhatia” and “Sudhanshu Trivedi” that could be the reason why Modi doesn’t hold press conferences.
Only a deaf and dumb person would miss the hostility that radiates from Razdan, Jerath and the bunch of The Wire who Scroll.in. Besides, so long as Modi doesn’t hold a press conference, it is advantage ‘his opponents’, he can be targeted for being more silent than “Maun Manmohan”, who held “three pressers”.
Nothing is going to change if he holds one – Razdan and NDTV will not suddenly become friends of Modi. Modi-baiters Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai left NDTV, but did that rid NDTV of its anti-Modi bias? On the contrary, NDTV acquired more bias. Let’s admit it, the media is not one single whole. There are different strands and personalities really don’t matter.
That’s because at the end of primetime, even during primetime, it’s media barons who are in control and no journalist is immune to the diktats of “owner-editors”. Witness the fate of the trio of ABP News anchors – Milind Khadekar, Punya Prasun Bajpai and Abhisar Sharma – thoroughbreds who were giving Modi a run for his money.
Talking of thoroughbreds, Arnab Goswami lost his cool Monday night when reminded by a JD (S) politician that a BJP MP controls Republic TV! “How dare you, how dare you,” he rose to the bait. “I own 85% of Republic equity. That is what makes Republic the only media which is wholly independent, how dare you, how dare you…”
The media in India is horribly divided and the political environment is not helping. The paradox of the ‘mahagathbandhan’ is so transparent: an alliance is predicated on divisions. If there were no contradictions what need for an alliance? Talk that all the pieces are glued together by a sticky mould of ideology is hogwash.
If anything binds the disparate together, it’s the overwhelming desire to grab power, and the overriding ambitions of regional satraps who head the disparate like so many kings and queens. The Congress’s Queen Dowager and Crown Prince are on gloriously outfitted steeds but the infantry is in different camps.
Polarization is almost complete. Those on the fence will get their backsides kicked unless they get off this or that side of the barbed wire. Even media. This or that side! Troll armies on social media are more or less evenly matched. But that’s only a guess. The division in legacy and television media is clearer.
Elsewhere, notably in the United States, where Donald Trump has given overwhelming power to social media, Facebook, Google and Twitter are coming under fire for censoring conservative voices notwithstanding the revulsion towards Trump. Lawmakers are working on how best to end censoring of voices in these media.
And “challenging the virtual monopolies”, giving “free-speech” alternative, is a new social media avatar called Minds.com. One analyst sees hope: “Challengers see potential”; there’s hope Google, Facebook and Twitter will not forever be able to control minds.
(IPA Service)
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