Rajdeep & Co: Convenient Testimonies

Imagine someone has a bounty of Rs.1.2 Billion on his head and you can imagine the thousands of bounty hunters chasing him. Or imagine a football match when a team gets pretty close and the supporting crowd roaring and cheering. Then when the player misses, there’s those “ooohs” and “aaahs”. When a Sreenivasan Jain or Rana Ayyub get crumbs from CBI with black beard and white beard the whole media starts roaring and cheering, doing high-fives, kissing each other, hugging each other in celebration. And when the CBI doesn’t score, the media-cronies go back into their hole with ooohs and aaahs. Up comes another match with some Vanzara letter. The lynch mob goes into a frenzy again roaring and cheering “letter-bomb, letter-bomb, letter-bomb… kill, kill, kill” and it turns out a damp squib. More ooohs and aaahs! Anybody? Can anybody at all help these people achieve their life-long dream? Oh lucky! Up comes Swami Aseemanand and they start jumping for joy again. The entire army of bounty-hunters from the media was out cheering.

Suddenly everyone knows Aseemanand is a man of God who will deliver these folks. Why? Because someone called Leena Gita Raghunath from The Caravan magazine sneaked into a jail and over a 2 year period interviewed him and discovered who was behind some blasts and terror attacks. I don’t give a damn what Aseemanand says. To me he now looks like a “rented-accused” to be also used as a “rented-witness” depending on what is convenient to the bounty hunters. For the record, I wrote a long time back that this NIA and other investigations look like a sham meant to last a long time to be used and thrown in a “need-based” approach (read Confessions from Aseemanand. Who’s next?). As with these accused, the useful idiots in the media are also “used and thrown” on a need-to basis. Certain powers control their owners who are trying very hard. Let’s read an excerpt from an interview for starters:

Hmm! Pusillanimous ownership of newspapers who lack journalistic integrity. What if the publisher also had an oil company like Exxon? You might wonder which owner the editor is referring to. Never mind! But when the part owners of the business also happen to be the managing editor and deputy editor with hatred in their DNA for one person you know how far their hatred can go. Not a day passes without Rajdeep Sardesai and his deputy Sagarika Ghose bitching about Narendra Modi or passing some snide remark. I wonder if they even get to sleep without cursing and bitching about him for an hour every night. That’s how Rajdeep starts his day as well. He can’t even walk his dog without bitching about Modi:

Naturally, the response from a tweeter is quite justified. Lately Sadanand Dhume seems to enjoy slapping this duo for their stupid statements as well. They don’t seem to realise SM is not TV and some will hit back with greater force at their bitchy comments. Let’s get back to Aseemanand. Rajdeep was keen that The Caravan interview will stir a pot of gold for him. Caravan earlier tried writing about other media networks and personalities but don’t seem to have found much success. There’s that long article about Arnab running into some 12786 words which I discussed in “Bitchin’ in the back row”. That was Caravan’s first attempt at getting into the top row of news-stands. Then they tried again with one on Network18 but that didn’t do much either. Finally Caravan too adopted the “formula” masala and came up with one against RSS, BJP or Modi, if you like, with the Aseemanand crap. Now the previous two attempts may not have endeared the magazine to the media-mafia but this one certainly did. Rajdeep & Co show us how best to use convenient testimonies with a new entrant to the mafia.   

There, you see! When it’s on Ram Guha, the ‘Eminent Distortian”, the Caravan becomes a “first rate” mag. Then another one where Swami Sardesanand testifies it’s a “fine piece” and that good writing is not dead. Very nice! But this Caravan’s writing is a lot like Aseemanand’s testimony; believe it when you like and hate it when you don’t. No one proves it better than Scotch-circuit specialist Suhel Seth (November 2011):

From “I love what you’re doing” to a magazine that “nobody reads” Suhel Seth is the classic witness who can be useful for any kind of convenient testimony that the media might like to peddle. All these images are from 2011. But here’s one from Rajdeep in 2012-13:

The Ooohs and Aaahs from Rajdeep can’t seem to stop for his favourite magazine. This is like Caravan playing Vanzara. Rajdeep likes, Rajdeep applauds! Of course, anything Ram Guha says is as good as Moses saying it to Rajdeep. Then Caravan goes and does something stupid. In November 2013 Rajdeep was off to Nagpur for a lecture but I wondered if he had any other agenda too:

Rajdeep didn’t tell us he was going to meet Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, and I am not confirming he did but Caravan did. In another of those long articles (a style Caravan seems to have borrowed from Suzy Roy) the magazine explained how the owners of Network 18 were forcing the dealership to bend to the Right and be a lot more favourable to Modi. Huh, what? Rajdeep and be favourable to Modi? The man he and his deputy bitch about day and night? So in one single shot all the good writing, fine, very very fine goes out the window and Rajdeep comes up with this convenient testimony:

So as long as it about others it is gold standard but when it comes to his own house, the Caravan’s article is loaded with lies and malice. Caravan should be ashamed for such trash. That’s inconvenient testimony by the struggling magazine which is trying to become a “made member” of the mafia. Just two months later the Caravan would seek forgiveness and redemption with the Aseemanand story. Rajdeep likes! Rajdeep thinks this is his pot of gold:

So Caravan can now claim full membership of the media-mafia having handed something to certain political vandals to jump in joy and cheer. When the mafia got “ball-possession” they started to cheer and roar again. But alas! It was another missed chance. The NIA decided not to pursue allegations of the “rented-witness’s” statements which aren’t even confirmed as authentic. And that is that! The bounty-hunt continues. Please do remember, there was also one Bhavesh Patel who claimed Shinde, Diggy and others had forced him to make some allegations and statements against Mohan Bhagwat and others in the Ajmer blast case. That was killed by the media without any persuasion. RK Singh, former Home Secretary, also stated Shinde helped a friend of Dawood escape law. Even that was buried since Singh is now a BJP member. Very convenient, eh?

The one thing Rajdeep and other peers of Arnab Goswami have to learn from the latter is that Arnab does whatever he has to do on TV; good, bad or ugly. He doesn’t bitch 24X7 on the SM or anywhere else about politicians and other articles that float around. Arnab is also smart enough not to respond to bitchy articles written about him like the one from Caravan. That should tell people on NDTV and CNN-IBN why their TRPs keep going south. Same is true for Narendra Modi. He doesn’t respond to the crap peddled against him by the likes of Rajdeep, Sagarika or silly magazines.

The first image in this post is from an interview (January 2014) of none other than Jonathan Shainin the former editor of Caravan. The Aseemanand episode comes after his departure. Shainin describes in enough words that owners of Indian media are political slaves and doormats. That he uses the hypothetical example of an oil company owner should also tell you something. He didn’t include editors probably because he was one himself. It is not just the Congress, CBI or NIA but people like Rajdeep Sardesai who have now become a laughing stock for their use of convenient testimonies. This goes for most of the media-mafia. Someday there will be a price to pay for this practice.

The Political Conflict At CNN-IBN

From ‘Argo’: "If you want to sell a lie, you get the press to sell it for you”. Truer line was never spoken in the modern age. The press now exists to peddle lies and falsehoods. The CNN-IBN in the title is meant to represent the whole IBN or TV18 gang and not one channel. Not one editorialist in the media had the guts to call the farce being played out in Delhi by the AAP party for the last 10 days. Elections, then 18 questions, 25 lakh letters, SMS referendums and so on are the most idiotic methods introduced in a bogus concept they call ‘Direct democracy’. Most of the honest commentary on politics is now coming from the SM or from stray news site observers. Here are a couple of tweets from TheJaggi, editor of Firstpost:

If you read the first tweet on the left (in the pic above) you wouldn’t know what the context is unless you’re aware of the background. The second tweet is quite obvious. What Jaggi refers to as fake liberals I call “Fiberals”. So Jaggi thinks people talk about right and left wing without understanding these terms. Hmm! Okay, but what was he responding to? 

There’s another tweet by TV18 Chairman Raghav Bahl supporting “right wing” economics being most successful in eliminating poverty. Oops! Does Bahl understand right and left wing? Jaggi isn’t sure he does, so he replies with “right way and wrong way” so that the answer to ‘centre-right’ in Bahl’s tweet can be avoided. I am an admirer of Jaggi’s articles because he says it like he sees it and reasons it well. But he’s dodging here. He doesn’t want to admit that both left and right see “their way” as the “right way” to do things. And that’s the reason for the conflict and it’s a healthy conflict, as long it’s not violent. But if historical evidence is of any value then the “left way” of solving problems has indeed failed. The AAP represents extreme left ideology if one goes by their ideas and manifesto.     

On November 8, 2013 a “source” told me Rajdeep Sardesai was headed for Nagpur. Although my source was correct I wasn’t willing to believe RS would go all the way to Nagpur just to deliver a lecture and not run a few other errands. So in a lighter vein I asked the question on what RS would be doing in Nagpur. It is no secret that RS has a severe contempt for both the RSS and BJP as does his deputy Sagarika Ghose. This contempt has been nurtured very fondly in a parent-like manner by both Rajdeep and Sagarika across the IBN family. So you can understand the usual haters like Ashutosh, Wagle and others in IBN who constantly send across hate-filled messages for the BJP and Modi. Did Rajdeep tell us what happened in Nagpur? Only partly as the following tweets indicate:

RS had a good time and drew a crowd of 1000 (my source tells me the Rotary hall can accommodate only 350-500 people). But Rajdeep doesn’t tell us what the Caravan magazine writes about his trip to Nagpur:

So Raghav Bahl is a right-winger who admires Narendra Modi, then you can understand the conflict with his entire gang in the IBN family. Unlike NDTV, TOI Group and others who are permanent supporters of the Commie ideology of Congress, Bahl can make the shift if he wants to. The Caravan article isn’t entirely accurate because while Bahl may be leaning right for some reason, his entire sales team at IBN is full of committed Commies. The first tweet in this post by TheJaggi (December 1) where he says people don’t understand the terms right or left wing is in response to the Caravan article by Rahul Bhatia (December 1):

Rahul Bhatia suggests the shift to the Right is being influenced by Mukesh Ambani. In a tweet he also contends the organisation’s leaning need not apply to its people who are unhappy about it. One can’t be sure but it can only be partly true in the absence of any clinching evidence. But what we can confirm with ample evidence is that the entire sales team of IBN had been a slave of the Congress party since the channel was born. Rajdeep himself had made his fortune by peddling stories about Gujarat 2002 and abusing Modi. The Padma award is just a small recognition for his work. Secondly, just a few months back TV18 had fired a lot of their employees to make the business more viable. Even comedians like Ashutosh and Sagarika were reportedly on the chopping block but survived with salary cuts. That they didn’t sack Sagarika is a sacrilege. You can understand the widespread grievance, fear and anger in the company when this happened. The compassionate Rajdeep didn’t like it but had to play with the top management on this decision.

What follows is a theory of what I estimate happened at the company. Now remember, this is a theory with reason but still a theory (with some inputs from “sources”. If you haven’t read “The AAPSucker Proxies” I recommend you do, before proceeding)

#1: Bahl went along with the Congress as long as things were rosy as did his sales team. Once he noticed the corrupt Congress had hit rock bottom he wanted to make an open shift but he was asking too much of his team. You see, people like Rajdeep, Sagarika, Ashutosh, Sagarika, Pallavi, Bhupendra Chaube are all soaked in Congress bloodline and philosophy for many years and an overnight shift would have been impossible and also a betrayal of their “Fiberal” clan. What would their darlings like Amartya Sen or Tarun Tejpal think of them, eh? Supporting the Congress any further would have been a deadly mistake for all of them but given their anti-BJP DNA the only party they could turn to was AAP. So it is quite possible that Rajdeep & Co. made it clear to Bahl that they would go the AAP way and he can like it or lump it. Faced with a revolt Bahl may have chosen to play along.

#2: Rajdeep & Co. have taken the chance on AAP to somehow thwart Modi and BJP coming to power at the Centre in 2014. It implies that even if the Congress gets routed in 2014 they hope the BJP can be kept out of power. A Narendra Modi as PM is a dreadful thought for the entire gang of Fiberals. So, multiple interviews of Arvind Kejriwal and other internal promotions happened. Bhupendra Chaube’s tweet (which he later deleted) quoted in response to a question by me is ample evidence of what was going on inside the IBN sales team. On November 20, 2013 Karan Thapar dissected the AAP manifesto and Rajdeep grandly tweeted it too. This was the first time since 786 AD that a party’s manifesto was so gleefully analysed. Obviously, the fact that AK had promised 50% cut in power bills, 700 litres of free water per Delhi-family and 500 new schools in 5 years all went over “The Tool’s” head. Someone pointed out on TV 500 schools in 5 years means 100 in a year and nearly 2 a week. Allocation of land in Delhi is under the Centre so how these schools will be delivered doesn’t matter. Also, the foolish promise of 50% cut in power bills and free water passed over their heads. Nothing mattered! They had to support AAP in the face of a definite Congress rout.

#3: Here are tweets from Ashutosh and someone called Latha Venkatesh who allegedly works as a financial analyst or reporter in CNBC-TV18:

Sounds like two desperate housewives? No! Ashutosh has worked his way up from small beginnings and many of his messages betray a feeling of “victimhood” and that explains his natural sympathies for Commie AAP even when his message contains LIES. We all know AK appealed to Muslims and also Dalits. What about this Latha? She’s the latest laughing stock from the CNN-IBN stable. She decided to support AAP because Maharashtra’s Congress govt decided ‘no-action’ against Adarsh scamsters, including Ashok Chavan. Bright as she is, she is blissfully ignorant (influence of Sagarika?) that AAP hasn’t announced contesting major Congress states in the next election. They have so far announced only contesting in Gujarat and MP which have BJP govts for over a decade. The only Congress state announced by AAP for a contest is Delhi neighbour Haryana which is AK’s home state too. So the morons at IBN feign ignorance of the pattern in which AAP is planning its LS campaign but this Latha will support them in Mumbai. Who did she support earlier in Mumbai? Mayawati?

Therefore, Rajdeep & Co want to promote a party that is exactly like Congress but doesn’t have the baggage of Congress. Like Karunanidhi or Nitish Kumar they want to save India from “communal forces” I suppose. Oh hell, even Karunanidhi praised Modi lately, so that downs the friendly numbers. It could be well be that Raghav Bahl has given some latitude to Rajdeep & Co. till elections 2014. Having gone through the trauma of having to fire over 300 employees just recently I doubt Bahl wants to rock the boat again so soon. So he’s given Rajdeep a long rope which will probably burn up around May 2014. At the moment Rajdeep, along with other channels, is lauding the stupid acts of AK and AAP in their referendums and SMS nonsense. AK is playing “victim” like Ashutosh, claiming he was forced to become CM by the people. He has created enough excuses in case he is unable to perform and deliver on his promises: Blame the “people who forced us to form the govt”. In an earlier post I had mentioned he could have formed a minority govt without fear as neither Congress nor BJP would pull it down with a major election around the corner. Even cartoonists can see what the Numero Uno and Unee political analysts can’t. TOI’s Ninan sees AAP, a pawn, riding the Congress quite well in this cartoon, with a noose around AK's neck.

The desperate ones in the IBN family are as battered as the Congress is by the Modi juggernaut. They simply don’t know how to deal with it or explain the phenomenon. That should help people understand the ecstasy and orgasm that the IBN gang and other channels are desperately faking in hope the AAP electoral performance will clean up BJP in MP, Gujarat, Chattisgarh and Rajasthan or wherever the party is. Yesterday Rajdeep bleated his frustration with Akhilesh Yadav over the mishandling of Muzaffarnagar victims in camps. Well, many of Rajdeep’s IOTY nominees have indeed turned out miserable non-performers. But hey, it’s not performance that counts with the IBN gang, it’s whether their sham awards will be funded or not given the nominees they pick. Of course, CNN-IBN awarded another IOTY to Kejriwal this year so watch out for Rajdeep’s tweet a few months later. Some observant ones like Bhupendra Chaube, Suhasini Haider and Anubha Bhonsle have kept out of this malicious campaign by their ring leaders. Pallavi Ghosh still suffers from the Stockholm-syndrome with Rahul Gandhi.

TheJaggi knows better! He does know who is right wing and left wing. From the entire stable of IBN he was the only one to bluntly state that Sonia Gandhi is the most divisive politician in this country and not Narendra Modi. The whole gang at IBN (save a few) also know AAP is a pawn and clone of Congress. How far these “useful idiots” will carry their campaign is a matter of time. Much as clowns like Rajdeep and C5M Sagarika talk about “rifts” in political parties, a closer look into IBN will also reveal a severe political conflict that runs deeper.

PS: Please do vote on the poll for India’s worst news channels (on the top-right margin of this page).

The Caravan: Bitchin' In The Back Row

It’s always nice to know someone is repeating what you’ve already said many times over, even if in a very different way. To me the surprise is not why it’s being repeated but why it wasn’t said some years ago. The surprise also is that only one is being picked out for scrutiny. We’ll get to that but here’s what I wrote two years back on November 19, 2010 over Barkha Dutt’s response to Radiagate:

“Barkha is also extremely fortunate that NDTV has chosen to respond to this expose in her support... This is also a warning for all media channels not to have their brand names be so heavily associated with "personalities". A media channel needs to be bigger than personalities. Else, one flawed celebrity would be enough to bring the house down”. Yes indeed! The way some of our news channels are structured it will take just one flawed celebrity to bring the house down. After the SC returned the petition seeking Narendra Modi’s prosecution for Gujarat 2002 in September2011, here’s what I wrote again: “I have absolutely no hesitation in saying that the degeneration of TV news owes a great debt to both Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai. You could call them the leaders of the moral decay”. November 25, 2012 when Vikram Chandra of NDTV wondered about the degeneration of news, I once again wrote: “My instant reply was that it was those from the NDTV stable who had contributed considerably to lowering the BAR. Er... That BAR is Barkha-Arnab-Rajdeep”.

His foot soldier gets raided by the Treasury team. Before he smashes the guy’s skull with a baseball bat Al Capone states: “A man becomes preeminent, he’s expected to have enthusiasms, enthusiasms… enthusiasms!” Arnab Goswami and TimesNow (TN) are now preeminent. The editor of a magazine, reincarnated after 12 years, wants to become preeminent. It’s important to put some juicy stuff out there. It’s important to move from the back rows of newsstands closer to the elite front. So Jonathan Shainin, editor of Caravan magazine raids Arnab Goswami. The writer is one Rahul Bhatia who writes on a variety of topics from Bollywood to jeans.

For a start, the article is as long as an older Bollywood movie. Reports have it that some people did indeed read the whole article and survive it. This article by Caravan titled “Fast and Furious: The turbulent reign of Arnab Goswami” is 11 pages long on the Caravan website. In a regular MS-Word file in TimesRoman, Size-12 font it runs into 20 pages with a total of 12135 words. This Arnab does take some serious surgical dissection. Doesn’t he? That’s a mini-biography that would have taken Bhatia at least a month to assemble. Most of it is culled from the grapevine. Except for a few names sources are mostly anonymous, ‘former editors, producers, colleagues’ etc. Is Caravan suggesting that such bitching, bickering and politics doesn’t exist in other channels? That celebrity anchors in other channels are darlings of their colleagues and employees? Never mind! It’s hard to pick but let’s try a few. (Quotes in blue)

As a matter of principle, The Newshour pits people and their extreme views against one another—but its main character is always Goswami…  How is this different from NDTV or CNN-IBN? This is the culture spawned by Rajdeep and Barkha. Have we forgotten that Rajdeep’s most popular programme on NDTV was actually titled “The Big FIGHT”?

They were to follow the Times of India’s lead, and draw out stories of particular interest to an under-represented Indian middle class; namely, the holy trinity of national identity, corruption and terrorism. “They are not a political constituency, and the Times Group was keen that their English news channel would give the middle class a relevance and, secondly, a channel of expression”. In the post ‘Who’s minding thestore – Part 2” I had mentioned that TOI had long done away with the nuisance of editors; that the ‘editor’ types catered only to a few intellectuals and not the aspiring masses. In another post I mentioned that if you have to be successful in India you need to learn to do business with the poor and the middle class. Which is what Dhirubhai Ambani did and which is what NDTV and CNN-IBN are failing at. I call these 2 channels ones for those with a ‘mini bar’ at home. Does Jonathan Shainin have one at home? So who is Caravan meant for? Let’s hear it in their own words: “The Caravan fills a niche in the Indian media that has remained vacant for far too long, one for the intellectually curious and aesthetically refined reader..”. Haha! You see, the new avatar of Caravan seeks the same intellectual folks that NDTV and CNN-IBN cater to. Naturally, they are going to be at odds with Arnab’s middle class approach with TN. Any surprise?

Under Goswami’s watch, reporters were instructed to thrust microphones at their subjects and demand answers because it made for dynamic television. (Cameramen at Times Now called it “the running away shot).. Is this unique to TN? Take a look at the pics in the post “Arnaboxious – The Witch Hunter”. That post talks about these practices in TN as also in all other channels. Incidentally, who is more famous for thrusting mics into angst-ridden people with the question “How does it feel for you”? Surely, this is a crime committed by all channels and even if Arnab calls it “door-stepping” singling out TN smacks of a motivated attack.

“..employees at Times Now say that Goswami felt overlooked at NDTV, and that his frequent derisive remarks revealed a simmering resentment that had still not abated. “It’s not a healthy attitude,” the senior Times Now manager said of Goswami’s distaste for Sardesai”. For that someone needed to speak to employees at TN? Ahem! Just observing them on TV here’s what I wrote in “Arnaboxious-The witch-hunter”: “So what makes AG behave in this fashion? Not sure, but I imagine years of playing third fiddle to Rajdeep and Barkha Dutt at NDTV could be one reason”. Contrary to what these anchors may think, petty rivalries and ego clashes can be seen-through on the TV itself. One doesn’t need to talk to gossip-mongers for such stupid trivia. What kind of Managing Editor deals in nepotism to bring in his wife as deputy editor so that a whole channel becomes a family run affair? This is even when the deputy hardly seems to have any journalistic or anchoring skills. Will Caravan need gossip from CNN-IBN to learn this?

Goswami had spent nearly a decade in Sardesai’s shadow, and he emerged from the experience sour. “Ten years back, in the pit of another newsroom,” he wrote in Outlook in 2008, almost certainly referring to Sardesai, “a now-famous TV anchor had laughed me off when I fought to get a mention for the ten people dead [in a blast] in a remote part of Assam. ‘Ten deaths in your part of the world equals the death of one person from here, as far as news is concerned,’ he had said. ‘It’s unfortunate but that’s a fact,’ he added, looking for and, shockingly, getting a raucous response from his audience”. Well, as far as Rajdeep is concerned that hasn’t changed. The tweet during the Assam riots would tell any idiot that Rajdeep knows which deaths are more important and probably even “pay more” for coverage.

Sardesai seems to make an unflattering appearance in another one of Goswami’s Outlook pieces, from 2011. Goswami again refers to an unnamed “fellow editor of an English news channel”, whom he describes as “a visible cog of a small power elite”, and who privately defends a corrupt chief minister at a meeting of national news editors, and then “punches his fist in the air and looks around for reactions”. Rajdeep and Barkha are both seen as cogs of power elites. Barkha is even seen as a power-broker. There’s something that inspired me to coin the line: “The media is the first line of defence for the corrupt”. I have even written a post long back titled: “Tainted? Have a chat with Barkha”. Caravan only seems to confirm that and if Arnab has noted that somewhere he probably has seen the garbage he was working with. If Arnab has written that then he probably also senses public perception better than his two former colleagues.  

When a member of the Times Now launch team met the former Hindustan Times editor Vir Sanghvi in late 2006, he asked her how Goswami was faring, and she replied that he was doing well. “He said, ‘Really? Then why are the Jains shopping?’” she recalled, and said Sanghvi told her he had been given “an offer to head everything” at Times Now within months of the launch. The senior manager confirmed that a placement agency specialising in media had been retained to search for Goswami’s replacement. Vir Sanghvi? Haha! Hindsight will now tell the world that TN owners must be thanking their lucky stars they didn’t hire Sanghvi. TN would have then been held in as much contempt as NDTV probably is owing to Radiagate. Who knows TN may have even shut down, with Sanghvi, considering it would have been just four years old when Radiagate broke.

Arnab maybe the one who put Anna & Co. in everyone’s drawing room but Rajdeep was the one who ran to Ramlila to get a personal pic with Anna. Barkha Dutt was the one who was booed and shooed away by the crowd at India Gate. Arnab put TeamAnna in the drawing rooms but who were the ones bestowing spurious awards on them? NDTV and CNN-IBN! Rajdeep and Barkha (and Rahul Kanwal) were the ones who ran to Ralegan Siddhi to suck up to Anna Hazare. Undeniable fact is that Arnab has and continues to destroy the consumption of crap that NDTV and CNN-IBN deliver in the guise of news channels. Stands to reason that TN also threatens the consumption of what Caravan is dishing out or hopes to dish out for the “intellectuals”. Arnab and TN aren’t part of any ‘unholy trinity’ that frequently host Musharraf and Imran Khan which has earned the contempt of the common man.

There is no denying that AG has a belligerent style of anchoring. That this is a cleverly thought out act is no secret either. He doesn’t do any Greatest Indian or other moronic programmes to sell his channel. Most of all, AG is not a mouthpiece of a political party while NDTV and CNN-IBN are often seen as extensions of 24Akbar Road. TN managed to cut all the frills and turned itself into a boisterous, noisy middle class channel. But why is Caravan doing this hit job? If at all they wanted to make an assessment of TV shows and anchors they would have carried one on all the senior anchors. Shainin appears quite often on CNN-IBN and NDTV as a panellist. We know the political persuasions of these channels. Is that a reason why their anchors were spared? The most important question when it comes to an anchor and viewers is the issue of trust, reliability and, most of all, integrity. I can safely say whether one likes Arnab’s anchoring or not, nobody doubts his integrity yet. I cannot say the same for some of his peers who are mentioned in the Caravan article or who were past colleagues.

The Caravan article only confirms what everyone already knew; that TN was way ahead in the TRP ratings for quite some time now. While NDTV is battling the TRP case in a court seeking damages, CNN-IBN has altered Rajdeep’s nightly schedule to match Arnab’s. When Suhel Seth told Shainin his was a magazine nobody reads, Shainin held up a tweet that said the opposite earlier. Suhel Seth famously said on TN that he could arrange an ‘Item-girl’ and get crowds of 30000. Caravan is no different from the cheap shots of Seth and uses the same tactics that got Arnab and TN to the top. On any other issue or time Seth and Shainin could have been kissin' in the back rows of movies. I guess Caravan just did an ‘Item-number’ to get the crowds. But will it get Caravan there? I seriously doubt it. Last time Shainin tried it (With Arindam Chaudhari) he ended up with a 500Cr defamation suit. What happened to that? Politically, Arindam, NDTV and CNN-IBN appear to be on the same side. Are these the ones Shainin is kissin’ in the back rows? Er.. right now, when it comes to TN, Caravan is bitchin’ in the back rows.