Welcome To Hunting Season

Since the present-day FBI was founded in 1935 J.Edgar Hoover was its life-time Director. He headed the FBI all of 37 years till his death in 1972. This is quite unheard of in the US; one man holding the same office for 37 years. Hoover became the most powerful man in the country and had dossiers on every politician and public figure of his time. He had enough dirt on Presidents, Presidential candidates, Senators, Congressmen, film stars, celebrities, sportsmen and activists. Every one! It’s not a surprise no one could unseat him except death. Since then FBI directors can hold only a single 10-year term in office. In contrast, the Supreme Court called our very own CBI a “caged parrot”. The Congress party has reduced it to not just a parrot but a puppet. It has used CBI to do hatchet jobs on its opponents at will, especially in the last 9 years of the UPA. Make a wild guess on who now plays the role of Hoover in India. Elections are less than a year away and the CBI is one of the key players in the operation to neutralise enemies. No, not enemies of the nation but enemies of the Congress party. The other key players who will now do the hit jobs on opponents of Congress are from the media.

Who are these targets? They’re mostly from the major Opposition party, BJP. Of course, I didn’t forget, they have their permanent target in Narendra Modi, the greatest threat to the Congress. In some states regional politicians will be targeted, like Mamata Banerjee, J. Jayalalitha, Mayawati and partly the Samajwadi party in UP. The CPM, CPI will be spared because they are the ideological bosses of the media and a Congress partner at large. The courtesans of the Congress party in the media will assist in tarnishing reputations, bring out fake reports, rehash old issues with new meaningless sting ops and they will get lucky if the Congress, through its many “funded” NGOs, manages an FIR or two against Modi. Times Now is already on its way running a documentary questioning the success of the nuclear tests of 1998 under AB Vajpayee. This is because one scientist claims it was a partial success but the intended perception is that the “test was a failure” and BJP fooled the nation. Make no mistake about this attempt.

Lately some voices in the print media are talking about it a bit more openly. Firstpost calls it “The ‘incestuous relationship’ between Congress and media” and in another it asks “Why this secrecy over Sonia Gandhi”? These shameless morons are like a bunch of blind men who suddenly discovered coal. It was evident to even a mild observer that the media was not just incestuous but actually a security guard that protected the Congress and SoniaG all this while. This blog has written about for over three years. There is even a post on this site asking “Why is Indian media scared of Sonia Gandhi”? way back in 2011. So it’s not as if these media folks have suddenly discovered their impotence. I believe they must have suddenly discovered some temporary herbal cure for it before they go back to being themselves.

On May 15 one of the born-again Congress cronies, HeadlinesToday, started to air a sting on Varun Gandhi’s ‘hate-speech’ case of 2009 in partnership with Tehelka (the specialist in stings on Congress opponents and which uses call-girls for journalism). If not for the IPL spot fixing disclosures this spurious sting claiming judiciary was duped by VarunG would have aired the whole week. Bad luck! But nothing to worry, just like HeadlinesToday brought back some spurious Gujarat 2002 sting op a few weeks back this orchestrated sting on VarunG will come back at the right time. And to aid their operations in targeting Congress opponents HT has even purchased a ‘transfer’ of Ashish Khetan, the stinger of Tehelka. Sometime back HT claimed to have exposed a major scam in Salman Khurshid’s NGO for the handicapped. It is now all forgiven and forgotten. HT is back in the good books of Congress and you can tell by the number of ‘Bharat Nirman’ and NREGA ads on the channel. HT is not the only beneficiary though. The other media courtesans aren’t missing out on the dole. I doubt anyone misses the irony of a scam-infested govt and party claiming “Bharat Nirman”. Some people jokingly call it “Bharat Nilaam”.

No reporter from Open Magazine or Outlook will likely be ever invited to any panel on NDTV. On the other hand Shoma Chaudhary, the so-called editor of Tehelka, is a frequent flyer on the channel. Both these magazines exposed the Radiagate and the involvement of Barkha Dutt and NDTV in the related scam. Calling NDTV and Tehelka as incestuous partners of the Congress would be an understatement. Here’s what Hartosh Bal of Open Mag recently wrote about the two:

“As far as some media organisations such as NDTV and Tehelka are concerned, their closeness to the Congress is no secret. Barkha Dutt’s role in the Radia Tapes did not seem to point to an individual act but an institutional malaise. It is only illustrative that today a Sanjay Jha of Hamara Congress as Executive Director of Dale Carnegie Training operations can hold a workshop at NDTV for those very people who could be asking him questions on a prime-time evening show. But beyond institutional closeness is the issue of individual reporters who have covered this government over the past nine years. Access requires give-and-take, and several reporters have developed an unhealthy proximity to a number of Congress leaders. In the durbar politics of the party, where it is necessary to strike down potential competitors, the media has played a vital role”.

The last line in the above quote is really the key: “striking down political competitors”. Let me just say: Hunting season has just begun. We are headed into an election year. NDTV, Tehelka, Headlines Today, Hindustan Times, CNN-IBN, Indian Express, Times of India, Aaj Tak, ABPNews will all be already preparing their spurious attack schedules. Every Opposition leader will be targeted, except Arun Jaitley. I guess Arun Jaitley will be spared because he is quite “friendly” with Barkha Dutt and heeded her request not to bring up Radiagate in the parliament committee. Apart from running the VarunG video of the hate-speech case over a 1000 times during the election campaign of 2009 NDTV went a step further. In April 2009 Barkha Dutt conducted an interview with Priyanka Vadra sitting on the lawns. If you ever wanted to know what a “suck-up” interview is just search and look it up. Oh yes, during election times Priyanka V also becomes Priyanka Gandhi. Barkha gloated then that PG could even use words like “epiphany”. I swear some school the lady must have attended.

And Sanjay Jha is giving management lessons to the propaganda artists at NDTV? Nothing can be more laughable. The man himself is the Congress whipping boy on media panels when things go bad for the party so why would people at NDTV need lessons from him? People at NDTV are bigger masters at cover-ups, distractions, reactionary mud-slinging whenever Congress is in trouble and, of course, “saving the tigers”. It should be Jha who should be taking more lessons from NDTV on improving his cronyism and propaganda management skills. Hartosh Bal wonders how these people could be taking lessons from a man they could be questioning on prime-time. He is wrong! They are all “durbaris” and the workshop probably relates to preparation for hunting season.

Hoover had a principle of going after bigger criminals and making a big show and point of it. He disliked going after petty gamblers and liquor smugglers. In contrast, the Delhi police chief, his deputy were on all channels beaming over the IPL betting racket. Betting and match-fixing are two different crimes. Betting is legal in many countries but match-fixing is not legal anywhere. While bigger criminals are getting away in Delhi the PC and his deputies seem to spend a huge amount of energy on the betting racket over multiple state jurisdictions. I am confident that except for the players being banned nothing much will come of it. But when it does come to chasing others the CBI typically spends a lot of energy on opposition party members. The best example is the case against Amit Shah. He has been given bail in a case where he has been accused of murder and in every hearing the CBI case and claim has been torn to shred by the courts. Arun Jaitley also pointed out that the case against Shah was meant to lead to Narendra Modi. Consider that with the case of Pawan Bansal where the CBI was quick to give him a clean-chit immediately after his resignation. Your guess is as good as mine on how many cases may be filed against Opposition leaders in the run up to the elections. Hunting season is ripe.

Shockingly, channels like NDTV, CNN-IBN, Aaj Tak, Headlines Today, ABPNews who scream their heads off over corruption never had one word to say about the most corrupt state govt in India. Andhra Pradesh is being looted for a decade and is in shambles. Not once have Rahul Kanwal, Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, Arnab Goswami and their poor cousins in Hindi channels ever shown the guts to talk about the massive corruption of the YSR govt. In chasing Jagan Reddy with CBI for breaking away from Congress what turned up was that over a dozen ministers in AP are corrupt and should be prosecuted. This report says it all. By the standards of our TV channels, all these ministers are angels. Is it any surprise than that our media is the defender of the corrupt and corruption? There is a massive incentive and reward for all this as Kanchan Gupta tells us. Even in 2009 Swapan Dasgupta mentioned a 400-crore bail out for certain media channels.

In the near future we are likely to more “manufactured” stories constantly being played out on TV and in print. Rift in a practically non-existent NDA. Few more attempts at filing FIRs against Modi funded by none other than his detractors. More Gandhi propaganda from NDTV and tears from Sheila Dikshit on some channels. The little sidekicks like Ashutosh and Wagle will heap mindless abuse on Modi. The documentary on Sonia Gandhi which portrays her as a widow and saviour of India will be played endless on your screens. Like before every election someone will release a new book on the great life of Rahul Gandhi. NDTV’s “sources” will multiply in peddling unverifiable reports. There will be endless stories of infighting in BJP over PM candidate. CBI may come up with some more cases. SC will be littered with petitions against certain political leaders. And most of all, there will be huge chorus of “communal” in most of the TV channels and newspapers as will that of “saffron terror”. If by accident the shoe is on the other foot, time out will be called, some joker will come up with some betting scam for entertainment. Elections are around the corner; Delhi, Rajasthan, MP, AP and India. Welcome to hunting season.