CNN-IBN - Happy Endings

Slowly but surely many Congress members are acknowledging the inevitable; that they had lost connect with the people and therefore did badly in the recent elections. This is dawning upon other parties like NCP, BSP, SP and AAP too. One Congress member from Kerala even called Rahul Gandhi a “joker” for the failure. There are many such jokers in the media too. Like the Gandhis, they too were like kings and queens who sat in their offices and had no connect with people. When they did speak to people, they scoffed at their ideas, sound-bites and tweets. They said SM would have no impact on elections. Now they’re reversing that opinion too. The Indian news media had become the poodles of one family and party. They survived on crumbs thrown at them without really having any real business model. I’ve said before that poodles surviving on crumbs cannot have the nose of a blood hound. They couldn’t smell the churning on the ground. A sorry chapter at CNN-IBN and their parent company Network 18 is coming to an end. Years of hate-mongering has its price. Raghav Bahl has already quit. Rajdeep Sardesai and Sagarika Ghose are reportedly on their way. Here’s what a report says:

First things first! One must compliment Raghav Bahl for putting together a news organisation from scratch. Building an organisation is not easy and takes a lot of toil, patience and passion. It must be painful for him to exit a company that he built but his only mistake, as with others, is not being able to see the writing on the wall. He allowed two of his senior editors to run amok with their political propaganda, lies and bad journalism. He refused to take feedback and measure the pulse of people. A company is built with talent in its early stages but as it grows it also acquires a certain amount of baggage. Such baggage is often confused for ballast. Rajdeep and Sagarika have indulged in extraordinary hate-mongering. They coined terms like “Hindutva laboratory” “Hero of hatred” “Mass murderer”; did they really think people will sit back and watch? In addition, their constant ridiculing of ordinary people and anti-Hindu stance did not endear them to people. N18 had become a slave of the Congress party and when that ship was sinking the entire network became a promoter of AAP. Sagarika, in particular, has indulged in crass skulduggery and mischief on many occasions. She should have been sacked long ago. That Bahl sacked ordinary employees and retained Sagarika reflects poor thinking and poor management vision. The bottle-neck is always at the top of the bottle.

The astonishing fact about N18 is that conflict wasn’t so much on the business or revenue front but more on their political preferences. I had tried to understand their political conflicts in two parts earlier (Part-1, Part-2). It should be of concern to the entire media on why there should be upheavals in a media house as a consequence of political changes. People in news media have political preferences but as news channels life should go on regardless of who is in power and political changes. And it was all out in the public with Sagarika’s mischievous tweets. Let’s follow the sequence. On February 7, Sagarika tweeted about an “evil” that is choking their voices:    

She was on a rant as if some major calamity had befallen journalists. And who exactly is that “Evil”? Obviously, she was referring to Raghav Bahl or Narendra Modi or Mukesh Ambani or a combination of them jointly operating from behind the scenes. Was there anything like that? The same Shivam Vij (whose report appears in the first pic above) carried an article about how “Sagarika can’t criticise Modi anymore”. And then Ram Guha (the family’s Nehruvian sidekick) also made noises about it. This became a major discussion in media circles. What happens then? There is a flurry of emails exchanged between Raghav Bahl and Rajdeep Sardesai. Here are some excerpts with date and timestamp (in blue):

Feb 10 – RB to RS 6.46am

Please see tweet below from Ram Guha. Coming from somebody as influential/credible as him (also one of your closest professional associates), this one is damaging. What’s more, Sagarika’s mail to me yesterday, clearly saying that she has NEVER been “muzzled” over the last 8 years in N18, completely and totally contradicts this. So in all fairness, I suggest we do one of the following things:

1 Sagarika isses a CATEGORICAL denial of this tweet; OR

2 We could release the relevant text from Sagarika’s mail to me, so that this matter is put to rest.

Do let me know how you would like to proceed on this.

Feb 10 – RS to RB 6.55am

This is I believe in response to an article appearing in scroll.in, which is a website run by someone called shivam vij. I have already replied to shivam, saying judge us by actions not innuendo. Can respond to ram too if need be. The point is, and I have learnt this to great cost, that any reply only leads to an avalanche of more responses and attracts even more attention. A denial can easily be issued, alternately, we just have to stay above the noise.

Feb 10 – RB to RS 7.07 am

Rajdeep – this one is too close/credible/for comfort/silence. Ram Guha endorsing this is almost equal to you /Sagarika saying this (especially since Sagarika was in Bangalore just yesterday). A full, formal and UNAMBIGUOUS clarification/denial, of the sort that Sagarika wrote to me, must be issued….. Silence is golden, but not always.

Feb 10 – RS to RB 7.11 am

Sagarika has not met/spoken to ram in a while. Ram is, however, close to a few of those who run the scroll.in website which is an ideologically left website. Ram, like many, has allowed perception to cloud his judgement, and to be fair, he has been a great supporter of the channel at all times. However, a categorical denial on twitter can be easily issued.

Interesting, eh? On February 9 when Ram Guha tweeted the alarm, Sagarika was in Bangalore and claims she couldn’t speak to him. Could be that she was very busy. Do note the time stamps in the emails above. All of it is early morning. I have not seen Sagarika tweeting early morning in the past but it’s possible I may have missed some. But as the transactions in the emails are going on what does Sagarika do? Here’s what she tweet early morning on February 10 to Ram Guha:

Wow! Bahl and Rajdeep are trading emails and Sagarika wakes up to tweet at 7.38am in reply to Ram Guha’s alarm. And what does she now say? It’s not Bahl or Modi or Ambani but ordinary folks on the SM who are stalking her. People on the SM are stalking her? Her story changes from “Evil” threat to “stalkers” on SM in just 3 days. Such is the mischief and lie-mongering of this woman. Anyone who calls her a journalist or employs her as an editor has to seriously have his head examined. But those who have observed her and Rajdeep for a dozen years know well how these two have consistently peddled crap through their channel or their articles. Rajdeep’s lies and hate-mongering goes all the way back to Star News and NDTV when he first covered the Gujarat 2002 riots and then participated in the malicious campaign against Modi. And all this nonsense for what? Because Sagarika and Rajdeep wanted to promote AAP unhindered in their political campaign under the garb of a news channel. So turn everyone – bosses, social media, everyone into “Evil”.

Apart from their own hate-mongering, these two got every charlatan who could condemn Modi or spew garbage against him in whatever form they could. They got “intellectual morons” like Amartya Sen, Amitava Ghosh, Dipankar Gupta and the whole lot to wilfully lie and rubbish Modi for their convenience. This is hardly the conduct of journalists or editors. Everyone has his or her bias but to peddle lies and even paint Hindus as monsters cannot be passed as journalism. And the constant spats with ordinary people on Twitter heaping abuses on them and then playing victim. Where did all this come from? Politicians pay the price for failing to read the people’s pulse and media crooks will not be exceptions anymore. Elections are over but habits die hard. CNN-IBN still continues to lie and twist statements coming from BJP as can be seen in the pic. I prefer not to comment on the finances of N18 or the luxuries in which many editors live at the cost of their sinking organisation because that is not the concern of this site.

There is a flip side to all this that cannot be overlooked. While the liars posing as editors may leave along with founder Raghav Bahl, the idea of Reliance taking over the whole network is not without dangers. In a note Bahl has stated to his employees Mukesh Ambani is a good human being and the company is in good hands. That may well be true and there is no reason to doubt that. But the idea of a corporate giant controlling N18, apart from other networks, is not a healthy turn. The very size of Reliance when all their businesses are put together is phenomenal. There may come a time when anything you purchase or consume will have Reliance behind it or Reliance maybe in the market for the same product with a controlling share. Reliance likes to control every commodity market – from yarn to gas to news to communication and so on. That’s a bigger problem to be addressed separately. Politicians and large businesses (that are not purely news media) controlling the media is a bad omen for citizens.  

One may change cars, change cities, change jobs and even change spouses but many people don’t change the easiest person to change: “the self”. No matter where Rajdeep or Sagarika go it won’t make a damn difference. This is true for many other crooks posing as editors in the media. I wonder what lessons they have learned. From their communications it doesn’t look like they’ve learned any. They will bring the same filth to the table and I doubt they are capable of learning any lessons. They sank CNN-IBN and they will sink someone else. There are no happy endings.

Can't Buy A Channel? Buy A Few Journalists..

Sometime back I wrote: “Does Reliance really expect to earn money from an investment in TV-18 group? Does it expect to earn money from any media group? With investments like 1500 or 2000 crores, which is peanuts for Reliance, what do they really aim to earn? Your guess is as good as mine”. The answer seems pretty obvious. And the answer comes from a media celeb himself. Yes, none other than Shekhar Gupta of Indian Express.

Towards the end of their careers some politicians and some journalists do wonder about the legacy they are going to leave behind. I tweeted sometime back with a generous dose of caution that Shekhar Gupta (SG) is trying to turn a new leaf, a different corner. No, I’m not doing any psycho-analysis of SG but his articles since December 2012 appear to be more of confessions than opinions. I am quite positive that apart from SG many other media celebs including Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai etc. are going through a phase of introspection. It was inevitable. But don’t count on change yet. Even the titles they are starting to use are sounding a lot like the social media. So SG writes a piece called “Mere pass media hai” after he fondly remembers the dialogue from the movie ‘Deewar’. Nice! So let’s read a bit of some key notes that SG makes:

“The fixer-businessman's new badge of honour— and disgrace… Besides political connections, there is one equally significant common thread linking the owners of chit fund companies currently under the scanner in the east. They are all media owners as well… but an investment that was monetised in other ways. It secured you political patronage, protected you from the police and regulators, helped you fix your rivals and, as in the case of the head of the media ventures owned by the Saradha group, got you a seat in Rajya Sabha. One thing it rarely made you was old-fashioned profits”. Does that explain the Reliance investment in TV18? And, of course, the Saradha guys aren’t the first ones to get a Rajya Sabha seat. There’s Shobhana Bhartya of HT, but for her the media is not a hobby; it’s a full time business. SG quite sensibly avoids the issue of media celebs also getting Padma awards. That would be quite damaging to his own cause. Wouldn’t it?

“Matang Singh, who appeared from nowhere to become a minister in Narasimha Rao's cabinet in Chandraswami's heyday and disappeared equally mysteriously. If he and his wife Manoranjana Singh made any money running the media business, we do not know, but it seems unlikely. Rose Valley, Tower Group, Shine Group, Rahul Group, Chakra Group and G Group, all under the scanner now in Bengal, have the same basket of interests: chit funds, real estate and media”. A man from “nowhere” as SG describes Matang Singh is now a tycoon and his wife, Manoranjana, was the one who defended Nalini Chidambaram as being “innocent” in the Saradha Chit Fund scam. Everybody is innocent in politics and media.

“And sure enough, the biggest business houses in India have tried their hand with the media and retreated with burnt fingers and singed balance sheets. The Ambanis (Observer Group), Vijaypat Singhania (Indian Post), L.M. Thapar (The Pioneer), Sanjay Dalmia (Sunday Mail), Lalit Suri (Delhi Midday), are like a rollcall of the captains of Indian industry who failed in the media business… But there is a difference between then and now, and between them and the state-level businessmen investing in the media now. They failed because they did not respect journalism. The current lot are setting up or buying up media mainly because they do not respect journalism, because they think all journalists are available, if not for sale then for hire, as lawfully paid employees. If you have a couple of news channels and newspapers, a few well known (and well connected) journalists as your employees, give them a fat pay cheque, a Merc, and they solve your problem of access and power. They also get you respect, as you get to speak to, and rub shoulders with top politicians, even intellectuals, at awards and events organised by your media group”.

In short, what SG is making a confession that “paid media” as it has come to be known is an epidemic. That almost all big business houses buy journalists just like they buy their fancy cars. And some of these journalists are on your screen 24X7 or somewhere in the print media. I am not aware SG has a presence in the social media in terms of a Facebook or Twitter account. If he were, he might get to hear some very unpleasant things about his profession and perhaps about himself. Those who scream loudest about integrity and credibility are possibly the ones who have been bought long time ago and have gone through some sort of reform in the last few months. You might have heard of those too. SG is wrong in assuming business houses do not respect journalism. It’s the professional journalists who brought the disrepute upon themselves. Seriously, you can’t be soliciting on GB Road in Delhi and then lament being called a prostitute. Can you?

The Radiagate episode has shown up many “fixers” and “fixed” journalists in the profession. Who can forget that the lady divine was told that “Congress toh apni dukaan hai”? What exactly have the Editor’s Board or Guild or whatever that Union is now called done about it? Nothing! At the very least this Union should have passed a resolution condemning the actors in Radia’s theatre. They didn’t because that would have brought out the muck about them too. Take the case of CBI showing Coalgate affidavits to be submitted to the Supreme Court to Law Minister Ashwani Kumar and members from the PMO and Coal Ministry. What exactly should editors be doing in such a case? Considering this is malpractice at the highest levels every editor with a conscience should have unilaterally condemned it in their editorials and sought the resignation of both the Law Minister and the PM. What do they do instead? They hold debates! There are certain issues which are not meant to and cannot be debated. It is not a case where an editor’s job is done if two viewpoints are stated. Arnab Goswami infamously screams at people to take “positions”. It is the editor’s job to take positions on such issues on behalf of the people. The fail miserably! Read some more:

“Most of us, particularly senior citizens in the profession, have stories of cash-rich businessmen promising "blank cheques" to set up new media companies. My favourite is of a well known and, frankly, well respected and clean real-estate baron coming in to see me once, in evident distress, and asking if I would set up a TV channel for him, whatever the cost, Rs 300, 400 crore. I asked him why. Almost every news TV channel in India was losing money. He said he had spent all of the previous day waiting for his turn at a land allotment meeting in Noida. Nobody asked him even for a glass of water, while all those who owned some media were ushered in with respect as soon as they arrived. And of course, the deal would have cost them much less. He had walked out with the resolve to set up his own media. I did explain to him that, in that case, he had come to the wrong people, but he isn't the only one of his kind you would come across lately”.

If one were to make an educated guess it’s not too hard to shortlist a few real estate barons from whom one met SG with the proposal. I remember a real estate guy telling SG that bribery for him meant payment for “speedy disposal” of files. SG didn’t bat an eyelid then. I would consider that real estate baron who met SG somewhat of a bimbo. Why would a guy approach the editor of a failing newspaper to set up a TV channel for him when he could very well buy a huge stake in a loss making TV channel with something like 300-400 crores? That’s not too hard to do and it saves the additional expense and energy of promoting a brand new channel. The other confirmation that SG provides is that most TV channels are loss-making businesses. Question is, how do they survive then?

As with many other businesses news channels too are likely to have a heavy dose of black money flowing through their veins. The Zee News extortion case is still on. A rival channel, NDTV, has investments from the Jindal group. CNN-IBN group has investments from Reliance. It is unlikely any channel or any major newspaper survives without politically supported funding. The investor maybe a corporate body but the investment could happen if a political big shot were to make a phone call and put in a kind word. That’s what fixers do. They make both “ends” meet.

Nothing in the media is going to change unless the editors’ union get together and pass strong rules and guidelines themselves. They are feeling the heat from the social media. And here’s trouble. So far those who couldn’t buy whole channels were buying individuals or groups of journalists. Even that glamour may pass and if they don’t change, such purchases may shift to social media. The influence SM will exert is likely to grow by leaps and bounds. The investments will flow there if the editors don’t get their act together.

If You Have The Inclination, We Have The Crime

Lots of Opportunities since the new regime came in. Let’s make lots of money. If you have the inclination, we have the crime.

In just the previous post we looked at how Hindustan Times with its HT Summit splurged on public money. Most of their major sponsors being big time PSUs and govt companies. Even the poor man’s work insurance corporation, ESIC, seems to have found compelling reasons to invest in HT Summit. Part of that unholy trinity of media I wrote about is CNN-IBN, HT’s media side-kick. It’s Managing Editor, Rajdeep Sardesai (RS), often likes to talk about “integrity”. Look at the samples. In the first tweet from February 2010 he yearns for “news with integrity” and in the second one, from July 2012, he complains about his integrity being questioned. “Those who abuse...” he says. Actually, anything that questions or ridicules our media celebs is nothing but ‘abuse’. The second tweet is because he had to apologise for an earlier stupid and tasteless tweet of his. When Deep Throat said “follow the money” he damn well knew what he meant. Pursuit of news and stories never resulted in loss of integrity but pursuit of extraordinary wealth has often led to loss of integrity. For almost a month my Twitter friend Suresh Nakhua has been asking questions of RS and CNN-IBN; tricky, troublesome questions which, of course, would amount to ‘abuse’ in the world of RS.

In this post I will just summarise the questions by Suresh Nakhua who has storified the financial joyride of CNN-IBN and certain group companies in his post “Few questions for@sardesairajdeep & some unknown facts abt CNNIBN”.  In other words Suresh has just tried to follow the money. Before you look at the maze of companies, here is a company that became part of Global Broadcast News Ltd (GBN). And it’s splendidly titled ‘SRH New Holding Private limited’.

Well, well, all the names from the CNN-IBN family are there. Sardesai, Bahl, Anubha, Chaubeji, Vidya Shankar and, of course, Cacofonix. Don’t read too much into that because there is nothing wrong there. This is just to share the ‘dramatis monetis’. All you need to do is follow Suresh’s tweets on that page sequentially and enlarge the images contained in each. You will find integrity in each. So here are the questions that remain unanswered:

1. SRH was a loss making company so how did it end up giving loans worth 19.71 crores? Hmm! One could say “we are a private company and it’s none of your business”. Yeah, so you can’t be in the public domain and keep screaming about integrity either.

2. The remuneration of Jt. MD, Sameer Manchanda, exceeds the limits prescribed under the Companies Act. The explanation is that GOI approval has been sought and if not received the moneys will be returned. Clever? First commit the offence and then claim the money is being held in “trust” and if the approval is not received, it will be returned. Integrity!

3. At March 2006 GBN had a loss of 46.53 crores. It’s a perfect qualification to receive an “unsecured loan” of 40 crores during the year, isn’t it? We shouldn’t complain about the loan itself. It should be of interest to all of us who or what entity gives such loans just in case we anticipate huge losses too. Needless to say, you need integrity.

4. To run your business you do need some pocket money at times. Who’s your daddy? Of course, Syndicate Bank. So you have this bank lending an unsecured loan of 5 crores to tide over festival periods. While the title shows the amount as ‘secured borrowings’ the statement says ‘NIL’ against security created. What was it secured with, integrity? Do read the article on Reliance and ‘Raghav’s Endgame’ squeezed in between.

5. Then Raghav Bahl, the Chairman of TV18 group, has some 7 Income tax cases pending against him. That’s normal if you’re running a large group of media companies, nothing to worry. Then in another page that Suresh produces, an IT penalty of over 1Cr has been reduced to a mere Rs.53461. Nice, isn’t it? Who’s your daddy? Integrity?

6. That’s all. Oh yes, there’s this small thing apart from the IT cases, there is an ROC case against Raghav Bahl that is pending. Oh, one more thing. There is this e-Eighteen.Com and Victor Fernandes who claim Bahl & Co. illegally diverted their businesses and are demanding over 3000 crores in compensation. If I read correctly, it claims there was an undertaking that TV18 would route business distribution through e-Eighteen which Bahl is accused of breaking. Integrity! Not the kind of program that will be debated on CNN-IBN or any of its group channels for sure.

There is hardly any doubt that since the arrival of the UPA govt in 2004 there has been a dramatic growth in the fortunes of certain media companies. People were complaining of the amount of tax-payer money on the recently executed terrorist Ajmal Kasab. He’s just one guy. The amount of tax-payer money certain media outlets may be guzzling without notice is like silent killers; like Cancer or Diabetes. I have stated earlier that our news media is the first line of defence for the corrupt. Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal have been spending a lot of effort on politicians. If they spent half that effort on media houses I have absolutely no doubts that corruption and financial misdeeds will start diminishing in every other sphere. And next time Rajdeep Sardesai talks about integrity I suggest you have a good laugh. At least laughing doesn’t cost anything.

*The title is from a Pet Shop Boys song.