Why Arnab Quit

If you haven’t read TOI-Story I recommend you do – Part-1 and Part-2. The Jains at TOI group have admitted that they are NOT in the business of news. They are in the business of advertising and PR. They learned from Sir Richard Branson that publicity is what sells and no publicity should ever be given free. And that is how “Paid news” was partly born in India. For years now, the front page of TOI is masked with a full-page ad sheet that is stuck to the paper and most people tear out the irritating thing before reading anything they want to. Giving front page coverage for major news that measures the pulse of the nation, public figures or celebrities pays far less. So TOI’s front-page is now an advertisement page. And a newspaper in India is statutorily obligated to cover only 33% of its total space with news items.

So if you understand the philosophy of the Jains – politics, ideology, nationalism and such things are secondary to money that flows from ads, entertainment, smut and sensationalism. Seriously, TOI carries blogs by that Radio Mirchi guy Prashant Panday and other garbage writers like Sagarika Ghose or Shobha De. You get the picture. Corruption is no stranger to TOI or their reporters either. Thus, you will find fake stories like “Rambo” or the recent death of an old man due to demonetisation at a non-existent ATM of HSBC in Mumbai. Everything Arnab Goswami did was fine as long as it did not affect any of TOI’s cash-cows.

When TimesNow started off in 2005 it was more a mix of everything. More like the redundant “Illustrated weekly of India” by TOI that died some 25 years ago. Then Arnab realised that drama, theatre and decibel means a lot. He learned this from the hate-mongers at NDTV. People don’t remember that Barkha Dutt’s “We the people” and Rajdeep Sardesai’s very noisy, bickering nonsense called “The big fight” were very noisy, bitchy shows. So Arnab did what he thought it best to beat his erstwhile colleagues at their own game. He turned TimesNow into a high-decibel show but with a passion and nationalism that was uncommon with his former colleagues. He added a good dose of entertainment and humour which is in keeping with TOI’s basic business. He also treated politicians and political parties as “accused” with pompous statements like “nation wants to know”. The crowds just loved this. And soon Arnab would have a whole cricket or football team as panellists for all his debates.

The other thing that Arnab did well was Paki-bashing and his demonstrated contempt for Lutyens crawlers. Being the most watched English news channel for a long time also got him prized interviews like that with PM Modi in June this year. This too burned a lot of hearts. In October, this year news broke that Arnab had resigned from Timesnow. After 11 years! It shocked the news world and the audiences alike. His detractors must have thrown a party – especially burned hearts like Barkha, Rajdeep and others. Many reports indicated there was a problem the Jains had with Arnab’s increasing right-leaning conduct of debates and the reporting by the channel. But that is not entirely true.

Arnab has hounded Nitin Gadkari for 19 consecutive weeks over an imaginary scam and corruption that turned out to be false. He also hounded Sushma Swaraj and Vasundhara Raje over LalitGate as he called it. It compelled me to write “ArnabGate” because of the targeted hounding of these BJP members without genuine cause. ArnabGate trended at the top in India on Twitter and also worldwide. That must have upset the hashtag king that Arnab had become with his channel. Anyway, post the Uri terror attack in September there was uncontrollable anger against Pakistan in India. Pak and those “pseudo-liberals” (as Arnab called them) who were Pak stooges in India were dead meat for Arnab. And night after night for nearly a month he tore into them with all the swords and daggers at his command. The audience applauded. Arnab even got threats from terror-operators and had to be provided security by the GOI.

Arnab was also critical of Pak actors and those employing them in Bollywood for not speaking up against the terrorists and against Pakistan. In particular, Karan Johar and some of his Paki darlings in a movie were caught in the storm. Arnab and many in India (including me) demanded these Paki clowns should exit India if they do not condemn killing of our Jawans. This was a line that Arnab had crossed that would not be tolerated by Jains no matter what the cost. The kind of power Johar and his gang have over TOI should not be underestimated. And Vineet Jain let it be known too:

Why was it the end for Arnab? Because Bollywood is a BIG cash-cow for the Jains. And to antagonise that industry was very damaging. Let me explain. TOI has a certain set of Bollywood stars that it will NEVER write against. No criticism will ever be made, their worst movies will never be trashed. I am not giving you gossip. I am giving you the inside story of how TOI operates with Bollywood. Paid promotion of stars, paid promotion of movies, paid promotions on TV all adds up to a huge business that runs into hundreds of crores. Those glossy pages you see with TOI, often with Bollywood stars who also double up as product endorsers, means phenomenal money for them.

There are desk reporters in all branches of TOI who can ring up a top or low level star for an instant interview over phone to fill pages. These stars are like “empanelled stars” obligated to give interviews and TOI will always write positive stuff about them and in turn those stars will promote their movies through TOI’s media empire. And now TOI is present in all major film domains – Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai etc. I cannot put a finger to it but even a rough estimate of anywhere between 500-800 crores from Bollywood alone per year would not be a bad estimate. And no Arnab Goswami can stand in the way of that kind of money.

Other than that, TOI also has its Filmfare magazine. I don’t think the magazine sells all that much anymore but their Filmfare awards are prized by the film and acting community. The awards, the award function survives on enthusiastic participation by the film community. Without their support, it would flop. It is probable that many Bollywood hotshots would have called up Vineet Jain and complained about Arnab’s tirade against Bollywood. Maybe some even threatened consequences. And that was that. Arnab’s quitting Timesnow has nothing to do with news or his way of conducting debates or the political stands he takes. It doesn’t have anything to do with Pakistan or terrorists. It’s just simply – Bollywood and money for TOI.

The Shoe Finally Pinches TOI

“The conventional approach is, therefore, imperfect since it does not capture the information that is of most relevance to teenagers and younger audiences. Advertisers or PR agencies have come to acquire a near monopoly of the information supply in these areas. Newspapers often have to rely on these sources of information for their copy. It is not unusual for newspapers to use leads from PR agencies to make their own copy. Professional news gatherers have long since ceased to treat PR agencies as anathema; indeed, many see them as an invaluable 'source'.”

The para above wasn’t written by me. It’s a quote from TOI’s article introducing Medianet in 2003. What exactly is Medianet? It replaces the PR firms planting articles in the media. TOI decided to do it themselves. So when you open your Sunday edition and look at the glossy supplements with a grand story on best wines (with pics of some top brands prominently featured) or the luxury-leather business you should know who’s been working really hard. Then there’s Private Treaties, another of TOI’s innovations. You should have known better; nothing is free at TOI. Want publicity for your movie? You pay TOI! Want a new launch reported? You pay TOI! Having a convention or a seminar and invite the press to cover? You pay TOI. Nothing is free! Being the leader, TOI’s frivolous practices have been quickly emulated by almost the entire media. And all this crap under the privilege of “journalism”.

Any genuine marketer will tell you advertising doesn’t sell. Publicity does! Sometimes even bad publicity sells (That’s why Bollywood often engineers controversies just before release of some movies). That’s why Arvind Kejriwal does a “nautanki” on the streets. Samir Jain learned from Richard Branson. You see, Branson didn’t have money to advertise or impress the press, so he undertook his own crazy stunts which the media had to report, for free. Samir Jain saw that as opportunity to make more money and that nothing should be reported free (read TOI Story). His brother Vineet Jain, who jointly runs the business, told New Yorker’s Ken Auletta: “We are not in the newspaper business, we are in the advertising business”. So what explains the following which appeared as a “Note to readers” by TOI on January 23, 2014 (edited excerpt)?

It is being said that this paper, after initially supporting AAP, has now 'turned' against it. We were prepared for this. We have been called pro-Congress, anti-Congress, pro-BJP, anti-BJP. We have been accused by some of being cheerleaders for Narendra Modi, and by others of running a campaign against him. And depending on who you listen to, we are either too soft or too hard on Rahul Gandhi. Truth is, we have no political masters, nor do we have any hidden agendas. The only side we take is that of our readers… We want to make India a better place for our children; we want them to grow up with hope, not despair. Our job is to inform, educate, entertain, guide, and above all, help every reader realise his or her full potential… We believe taxpayers have a right to expect that their money is spent honestly, prudently and wisely—instead of disappearing down the ratholes of sloth, corruption and political handouts. We believe natural resources need to be allocated fairly and transparently. We believe that business, when honestly conducted, is good for the nation. We believe in the creation of opportunity for the greatest number. We will support Modi, Rahul, Kejriwal and every other politician every time they do the right thing. But no one should expect a blank cheque from us. Our sole allegiance is to our reader, not to any politician or party.

Really? TOI cares about its readers? Then it gets even better! TOI wants to make India a better place for children? I apologise if you fell off your chair. It’s not your fault. Did TOI suddenly have an attack of conscience? We don’t know, we can only make a fair estimate. But what I can tell you with a certain amount of confidence is that money has to be behind the note. Nothing else drives TOI.

It is true that as India’s biggest advertising house TOI generates enough money and can withstand being bulldozed by politicians or political parties. But it is also true that some of their biggest advertisers do have political leanings. I cannot list all the crimes of TOI over the years but let me give one good example of how the reader is treated as a fool by this ad agency. A reader buys a paper and trusts the front page for the most important news of the day. Advertisers like the quarter page ad on the front page (usually at the bottom right) because the ad attains “news status” and is impossible to miss.

TOI thought what the hell; let’s make the ad the front page itself. This started sometime back and once in March 2010 it started with a full front page and went on through the inside pages as well for a new car brand. TOI doesn’t care about the irritation it causes the readers. Mind you, I am in no way suggesting ads shouldn’t be carried in an innovative manner but then don’t also brag about caring for readers if one is going to spam them on the front page. The practice of front page ads got better and better. The one on the left is a latest one from this month. There is something interesting about this. TOI realised that since their front page had become a “hoarding”, readers were smart enough to just pull out the whole page and dump it and not even bother looking at it. Now TOI feels a lot smarter, you know. So what they do now is use adhesive and paste that “hoarding” on top of the real “news front page” so you will have to tear it off before you get to the news page. Care for readers? Who are these scumbags fooling?

Now, where political nonsense of TOI is concerned the entire group, like many others, has been hounding the BJP and Narendra Modi in particular. I doubt anybody missed that. The most glaring example of this grand adventure would be that of the fake “Rambo” report after the Uttarakhand floods in June 2013. Anyone remember that? That bogus story was in the media for several days and played over and over again on TV. Now that page has disappeared but the clarification issued by TOI remains:

And that clarification was dumped in some inside page. LIE BIG, retract small. That’s the technique used. Based on this bogus report other group sidekicks of TOI also start writing blogs on their site with the hilarious lies. Here is one Prashant Panday who is trigger-happy to heap nonsense without much fact-checking:

Where did that Rambo come from? Salma reports it and Sabrina quotes it? Then this same Panday writes BJP claimed 11 lakhs attended Modi’s Patna rally under “bogus crowds”. I’m not sure this number has been claimed anywhere. Then Panday wrote crap about Arun Jaitley and then withdrew the article with a clarification stating his mumbo-jumbo was based on some other news reports. In short, peddling of sheer nonsense! Does TOI have an editor at all? And if that isn’t enough here is another one by TOI where it carries a silly article “Narendra Modi’s solar eclipse” laughably in two different pages by two different writers:

There is much more that can be dug out but that will only exhaust you. And they synchronise the whole campaign with their TV channel. Can TOI explain how it was honest to its readers and viewers when it carried a 19-part witch-hunt of Nitin Gadkari on TimesNow? Or have they already forgotten that? And now they claim they are politically non-aligned. And what are the great practices at TOI? Let’s get some more.

The PCI’s “Paid News” report was buried by the council till it was brought out by pressure and compulsion. Featuring prominently in that report was TOI, as the leader in bringing unethical practices to the news media. Both Private Treaties and Medianet received adverse mentions in that report. You can read the full report here. All their Medianet and Private Treaties related articles and supplements had scant respect for the readers and I would have to say “dishonest” to readers. So all this whining with our “allegiance is to our reader” can’t be taken even with a truck-load of salt. And where the voice of a reader or observer is adverse to TOI then they use their muscle-power to legally drown those voices. This action by TOI against a blogger called Aparajita Lath is worth a read. A young law student, all that Aparijita had done was write an article based on facts and information already in the public domain and nothing more. TOI bullies her but doesn’t take action against any of those powerful people she had quoted in her article.

Did TOI support AAP? Absolutely yes! But it is certainly not the only one. I have time and again pointed out that for over a year when the AAP was neither in govt nor opposition anywhere, their members were allowed a free ride to play the “monkey” and hurl abuses and mindless nonsense against Congress, BJP and against every politician of their choice without any responsibility. Slowly, it became clear that the primary target of AAP was BJP and not the Congress. Are we to believe that all the so called pundits and experts at TOI and Times Now are such idiots that they weren’t seeing all this? Rajdeep Sardesai wonders why this note by TOI. He may have to issue such a note himself one day because CNN-IBN group too has been promoting AAP for a long time. Ashutosh of IBN7 is proof of someone pretending to be a journalist while being a political activist.

TOI doesn’t give a damn about anything but money. So I would ask them to spare the moral sermon. This note to readers can come only for a few reasons. Circulation is falling and readers are seeing through their biased “advertisements” for some political party. A big advertiser must have threatened to pull all advertising if they “did not behave”. And last, but not the least, it is election season and some powerful political party may have threatened to pull out campaign ads if they “did not behave”. These are my estimates and can vary. But one thing is for sure as Vineet Jain said TOI is not in the news business but in the advertising business. Somewhere, the shoe of ads must be shrinking and it is probably starting to pinch.

PS: Please vote on the India’s worst journalists poll -2014 (Right margin of this page).

Rambo-II: The Lies Of India

In his book of ‘7 Habits’ the late Stephen Covey discusses the principle of “Measure twice, cut once”. It’s a principle that tailors and carpenters have followed religiously for ages as a professional practice. Once cut, cannot be reversed. The same should be true for those claiming to be journalists. Before shooting off something they need to fact-check, they need to double-check. As ordinary folks, you and I can believe events and pics from anywhere but why should paid journalists be fooled by those? But even ordinary people are now measuring twice. In the previous post I had talked about the dubious and frivolous nature of IBN editors’ comments. That IBN is a communal channel that hates anything in saffron is not a big secret. Here’s another one from the channel who shot off her fingers:

Her name is Rituparna Chatterjee and she does something with movies in CNN-IBN and her Twitter handle is appropriately named “Masalabai”. On August 6 she tweeted pics claiming Baba Ramdev was “gettin’ jiggy” with it. Someone points out the pics are not real BRD. She insists “it is”. Turns out the guy was Sunil Talwar (some alleged actor) portraying BRD and dancing around. Masalabai then says “In all likelihood a morphed picture or a lookalike. I take no responsibility”. Fact: The pics she tweeted were from the same pages that reported Sunil Talwar in BRD garb that is shown above. So she deliberately and mischievously tweeted the pics. That’s right; if alleged journalists took some ‘responsibility’ there wouldn’t be so much contempt for our media.

So when a mall in Ahmedabad, Himalaya Mall, decided to charge Rs.20 as entry fee on Eid weekend beginning Friday, August 9 the Times Of India screamed this was being charged only from Muslims. Welcome to Rambo-II: The lies of India. The TOI from being a respected journal now has many names. It’s called the TOI-let paper. If that sounds offensive some call it a more respectable “Slimes of India”. Here’s how they screamed:

The report claimed discrimination against Muslims in “Narendra Modi’s Gujarat”. Some people pointed out that anti-India violence, LeT flags hoisted and shops and houses burnt at Kishtwar (in J&K) is not in “Omar Abdullah’s J&K” but some mall charging an entry fee in Ahmedabad becomes associated with Modi. That’s why TOI is known “slimes” and they’re not alone in this hate-Modi campaign. But like that bimbo Masalabai there’s that other bimbo of IBN who shoots off his mouth. Here’s Ashutosh, again first off the block with mindless hatred:

So he falls for the story, doesn’t measure twice and shoots off his prejudiced, hate-filled head and even says that India will not breathe if we don’t heed these warning signs. My response? Breathe in a bit of Gujarat! YES. Inhale crap from IBN, NO! Even Rajdeep Sardesai couldn’t resist the temptation.

But in this case let’s give Rajdeep the benefit of doubt. After all, with a “Suprabhat” he was merely tweeting headlines as they appeared in media. Not only that, he also had his local reporter double-check on the situation and offered a clarification while slamming the “Slimes of India”. So where does that leave the “Liars of India”? This Himalaya Mall in Ahmedabad is located in a predominantly Hindu area in Ahmedabad. There might be just a minor sprinkling of Muslim households in a radius of 5 kms of this mall. Of course, on a festive holiday Muslims can turn up from far-off places too, especially when you consider new movies release on Friday. This time the rush must have been for SRK-Deepika’s ‘Chennai Express’. Let’s first look at all the reports of August 10:

TOI Ahmedabad Mirror reports “Mall charges visitors Eidi”. Then TOI main edition carries the story as “On Eid, Ahmedabad mall charges entry fee from Muslims”. The latter edition clearly reports discrimination against Muslims. Following the outrage on SM and Twitter TOI stated they stand by the story: “Profiling on Eid indeed took place at Ahmedabad mall”. Here are two pics that were included in the Ahmedabad Mirror report.

Observe closely that unless you’re wearing a skullcap or the traditional (Pathani?) Muslim dress it is hard to tell if you’re a Muslim. If the US profiles Muslims at its immigration checks it’s by the names in the passports and other IDs. Even Kamal Haasan was held up because his name sounds like a Muslim one although he claims to be an atheist. That would be “profiling”. How in the world can you tell if a man is Muslim (other than the caps, long beard or garb). Most Muslim men dress the same way as a Hindu or a Christian. One can mostly tell a Sikh by the turban, although there are Sikhs who don’t wear one. So this crap from TOI is merely based on loose-talk and rumours. In the top pic, most of the people in the queue and getting in are not in any Muslim garb. Or to rephrase AK Antony “they were dressed up as Hindus”? Women at the mall were anyway allowed in free so thankfully that hasn’t become an issue.

I visit this Himalaya Mall quite frequently and know for a fact that the open floor at the mall can hold no more than 200-300 people comfortably at one time. The management claims a footfall of 10000 on a normal day which goes up to 30000 on holidays/festival days. So one can imagine the rush and the security threats it poses. Even in the rush it is impossible that a majority of visitors are Muslims. In that location, it is always Hindus in a huge majority. So the TOI group has done nothing more than a “whack-job” (to use a mafia term). People who have visited the mall on Friday (including my friends) have laughed at the idea of discrimination against Muslims. The entire reporting is either based on loose-talk and hearsay or a pure unadulterated filth. If there had indeed been discrimination the entire media, along with TOI, would have feasted on the incident. The TOI seems to be motivated as reflected in their “view” appended at the end of the TOI edition:

Now what exactly does the action of private business units like malls have to do with Narendra Modi? Well, that is precisely the motive behind the TOI’s whack-job. The mall is just a nail to hammer Modi with. TOI seems sworn to a policy of tarring Modi no matter what. Even with fake stories. I call this entire episode of “discrimination against Muslims” by TOI a fraudulent piece of reporting. TOI has a tradition of spewing nonsense and standing by its stories. It carried that fraudulent piece of “Rambo Act” by Modi during the Uttarakhand floods. It stood by the fake story till the entire media had milked it dry. Then 15 or 21 days later the paper made a small retraction in small corner on page 8 or 9. Lie BIG, retract SMALL. That’s the rule with news media and TOI is the leader.

The Himalaya Mall is reported to have issued a circular (image above) to its store owners that such an entry fee will be charged due to expected rush. Their notice informs the stores to redeem the Rs.20 fee against purchases made by the visitor. So practically, a visitor paying the fee gets a refund if he purchases something, which most Mall visitors do. Here’s a tweet from someone in Kochi mentioning a mall charges Rs.100 entry fee which can be redeemed against purchases. It is neither a strange nor an unusual practice that would call for discrimination against any community.

Business units neither like such adverse publicity nor the associated controversies. They prefer to get out of these. The Himalaya Mall has since dropped the entry fee since these reports which TOI’s Ahmedabad Mirror proclaims is because of its reports. Load of rubbish! Business units know newspapers and media blackmail them with the threat of more adverse reports if they are challenged. Himalaya Mall just took the simple way out and dropped the entry fee. The criminal here is TOI. Look the URL below:

“http://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/index.aspx?page=article&sectid=3&contentid=” (Report)

The first time on August 10, the URL report was “Mall charges visitors Eidi”. Now the same URL says “Mall scraps ‘unfair’ entry fee” (The link I posted earlier with the pics is a snapshot I retained of the first headlined article. Yeah, people have to keep snapshots owing to the deception of media). If what TOI reported was true, why did they delete their original report and replace it with the new headline? This is a fraud on the readers. This is nothing but Rambo-II: The Lies of India. Lesson for news consumers: Never trust the media or the reporters at the first instance, except for live visuals that you see. Wait for a double-check and confirmation on social media or from your own references.