Arnab vs Barkha: ‘the liberal gold dust has worn off’

A fuming Barkha Dutt has finally broken the omertà that’s long existed in the mainstream Indian media: of staying clear from publicly censuring or critiquing other colleagues, even though one may obsess ad nauseam over their flaws in private.

In fact, for someone who (when she had a bone to pick) made only veiled references to Arnab Goswami in the past, describing him as “a certain news anchor”, rather than laying pointed blame, Dutt’s voluble lashing at Times Now’s  Editor in Chief created a mini tsunami of sorts on the internet. Not only did the spat become a trending topic on social media, it also became fodder for primetime debate on a competing television channel – CNN News18 – where Dutt, in an inversion of her regular avatar, appeared as a newsmaker panellist rather than as the interviewer, pouring more scorn over her former colleague’s four-minute rant against a section of the liberal media, whom he referred to as “Pro Pak doves” (ie terror sympathisers).

The parody website The Unreal Times had predicted this strange coming together a while back, a sort of “media gathbandhan” against Goswami.

In a Facebook post that has now crossed over a million views, Dutt tore into Goswami’s monologue, writing, “I hope I will always be someone whose journalism you loathe, because trust me, the feeling is so utterly mutual that it would kill me to be on the same side of any issue as you.”

The lambast may have grabbed eyeballs for the day, but the sad truth of the matter is, Goswami’s militant anti-intellectualism seems destined to triumph in an age where nuance and reflection are virtues that have died a slow, painful death under his channel’s market leadership. Times Now has continued to hold its lead in BARC ratings for several weeks, with NDTV a distant third in the English News category, as per June data.

In his acerbic, long winded intro, which was at the heart of this ugly fight, the face of Times Now more or less exhorted the government to hound members of the liberal establishment who held an adversarial point of view on the Indian military’s crackdown in Kashmir, after militant Burhan Wani’s killing. It is hard to think of another time in the history of India when a popular journalist has effectively asked for a gag on the press. However, as the senior journalist MK Venu accurately observed in a comment to Dutt’s Facebook post, Goswami is a strange breed. He’s angry, righteous and pro-establishment. Not angry, righteous and anti-establishment, as the media tended to be in the good old days.

Therein lies the difference and distressing as it might be, it is exactly what makes Goswami such a tour de force. Public opinion in India too is unquestioningly complimentary to the government of the day. While being greatly antagonistic towards sections of the media that don’t toe the official line — just consider the glee with which terms like “paid media” and “presstitute” are bandied on social media conversations — there seems to be a groundswell of vociferous support towards the current administration. This only becomes alarming because instead of creating an atmosphere of debate, it encourages the suppression of contrarian points of view.

Goswami’s repressive ideas about how dissent (particularly by the personas non grata of the liberal media must be dealt with) thus find dangerous resonance among a vast educated, tech-savvy mass of Indians who watch his shows and populate social media, with their vicious trolling weaponry and penchant for precisely the kind of polarising, chest-thumping, hyper-jingoism that he peddles every week night.

Shankar Sharma, financier, and a man who knows what a witch hunt by this government means,  having been at the receiving end of its ire in his capacity as an investor in Tehelka, summed up the changed landscape in a tweet response to Dutt. “This is the journalism that works. Like it or not, sad or otherwise. India has changed, the liberal gold dust has worn off,” he wrote.

India has indeed changed. What’s working today, in and outside of television studios, is a rage without pause, a version of right-wing nationalism stripped off all complexity, perpetually seething with murderous rage, and full of easy villains to whom badges can be attached. An implicit alliance with the broader agenda of the state is fast becoming non-negotiable. A viewpoint that’s on the wrong end of India’s national security debate, or critical of the excesses of its army, is forbidden. In the studios of Times Now, one cannot rightfully be a patriot, but also suggest that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act be repealed.

It is to a great commercial advantage that Goswami has occupied this space on Indian television, particularly over the past six-odd months. The channel’s bombastic coverage of the LalitModi-Vasundhara Raje-Sushama Swaraj saga has visibly followed a volte-face, a change of tack following which Times Now has almost brazenly become the proxy voice for the establishment.

Presumably Goswami’s profit-driven, chameleonic and largely ideologically-agnostic bosses couldn’t be happier. After all, they are only riding what is now a global wave of rising right-wing nationalism, defined by leaders such as Donald Trump, who thrive on polemics, hunt for scapegoats, are unconcerned with processes of democracy, and throw simplistic solutions at complex problems; promising to shine a light on what they present to the masses as the ruinous dark.

Could the environment have been more conducive for Goswami to shine and thrive?