About two years ago, I was invited by the Republic TV to take part in a debate on a controversial subject. I was in two minds, whether to accept the invitation or reject it. A relative who knew the channel pretty well advised me against joining the debate.

“You will be asked a provocative question and you will answer it in your own distinct manner. Arnab Goswami will pounce upon a word or a phrase you used and will start ridiculing you. You will not be allowed to make your point clear. You will be shouted out. Ultimately, you will end up as a laughing stock”.

I could not reject my relative’s advice and I told the channel that I was not interested in taking part in the debate. “You should also be careful while talking to them, as they might even record your phone conversation and broadcast it”. He was not wide of the mark, as I recently saw such a video clip.

A Republic TV reporter approaches Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar and asks for his comment on something. He says in a matter-of-fact manner that “I do not talk to anti-national channels”. Even after repeating the statement twice, the reporter does not leave him. Then, Aiyar loses his cool and asks him to get out.

Once I was having a meal with Shashi Tharoor, MP, when the news of the death of former President Abdul Kalam came. Thereafter, many television channels contacted him to get his comment. He patiently gave his comments to one and all. However, he refused to cooperate with this particular channel.

Two days after I refused to join the Republic TV debate, I was invited to join a panel discussion on the India Today channel on the same subject. I readily accepted the invitation from Rajdeep Sardesai and made my point, however brief it was.

I have never been a regular watcher of the Republic TV. Once I saw a Pakistani person attending a debate. Goswami abused him left and right, calling his country a “failed” state and Pakistanis a shame for the whole world. I wondered how that gentleman allowed himself to be abused in this manner.

Someone told me at that time, “Maybe the so-called Pakistani was paid to hear the abuses”. When it comes to the Republic TV, no one can be sure what strategy it would adopt. It can go to any length to ridicule and humiliate a person who, it thinks, is opposed to its own interests.

Goswami was not always like this. I remember one of my friends and Assamese writer Dileep Chandan proudly showing me his house on a hillock in Guwahati. He was at that time with the NDTV. 

When he left the NDTV and joined the channel owned by the Times of India group, he unleashed his own brand of television journalism. He became infamous for his decibel capacity and for the manner in which he harangued. He equated himself with the country when he often said to the delight of many, “the country wants to know”.

The tragedy is that many young television anchors began to imitate him so much so that television debates became worse than the “fish market”, to use a native expression.

The astronomical remuneration he received went to his head and when he started his own channel with financial support from friends in the BJP, he thought he could make it the preeminent television channel in the country.

Anyone who has seen television debates on the BBC, the CNN and Al-Jazeera would have been shocked by the crude and shameful manner in which Goswami conducted his show. He pretended as if he was the last word on patriotism. 

He would not even bat his eyelid before calling anyone who questioned the government, be it on the Bhima Koregaon violence or the citizenship law or the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution or the protest against the fee hike in JNU or the demonetisation of high-value currency notes or the farmers’ agitation, “anti-nationals” worthy to be sent to Pakistan.

If Goswami had his way, he would have sent all the human rights activists, Opposition leaders and anyone who questions the fascist trends in the country to Pakistan! I have seen a magazine devoting page after page to feature his ultramodern apartment in Mumbai. It was tastefully and expensively furnished.

I saw a video of the sprawling drawing room when the Maharashtra Police arrived there to arrest Goswami. He was arrested not for his journalistic activities but for not paying his architect, who allegedly committed suicide. While ordinary people like the octogenarian Reverend Stan Swamy just complied with the inhuman arrest order, Goswami tried to resist it with all his physical and political might. He considered himself above the law!

That was the time when the whole nation realised the power of Goswami. Union ministers like Amit Shah and Prakash Javadekar competed with one another in issuing statements in support of the disgraced anchor. They saw the arrest as an attack on the freedom of the Press, little realising that it was tantamount to supporting non-payment of fees to an architect forcing him into penury.

Goswami’s clout was such that even the apex court found it necessary to intervene so that he could be released from jail. Instead of being ashamed of himself, he came out of the jail as if he was the Mahatma who was released from the Yerwada jail in the same state in 1933!

I have seen a video clip of the Republic TV reporters hounding Shashi Tharoor who did not want to talk to them. They were holding the mic to him as if it was AK-47. Of course, Tharoor kept his cool, as he got into his car and went away.

But when a well-known comedian and fellow passenger Kunal Kamra confronted Goswami flying in the same Indigo aircraft, he behaved like a rat in front of a cat. The comedian was barred from flying for some time by the Union civil aviation minister, Hardip Singh Puri, who should have been doing a better job than monitoring the movements of passengers in aircraft.

All along, one claim that Goswami had been making is that the Republic TV was the most popular television channel. He would always quote the TRP (Television Rating Point). 

For starters, it is a tool provided to judge which programmes are viewed the most. This gives us an index of the choice of the people and also the popularity of a particular channel. People know how some newspapers fudge the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) figures to claim a higher circulation. Few knew that the TRP could also be fudged.

There is already a criminal case against Goswami in Maharashtra for trying to manipulate the TRP to his advantage. Money was paid to people to keep their television receivers on with the Republic TV on the screen, whether anyone viewed it or not.

In the course of the investigation, the police stumbled across 500 pages of WhatsApp messages Goswami exchanged with the then Chief Executive Officer of the TV-rating agency Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), Partho Dasgupta, who is now in judicial custody in Maharashtra.

Till the time of writing, Goswami has not disputed the authenticity of the WhatsApp chats. Of course, as is his wont, he has blamed Pakistan and anti-social elements in India for the attack on the Republic TV. I have not read all the chat records but the few I have read bring out the hypocrisy of the man who claims to be an ultranationalist. He is nothing but a profiteer who is ready to do anything to rake in money.

When Pulwama happened in which 40 CRPF personnel were martyred, Goswami exulted over it. “This attack we have won like crazy”. Those who know English may laugh at Goswami’s command of the English language but they cannot be in doubt about his happiness that the killings would help the ruling BJP. 

He is also happy that his channel has made good use of the incident to increase its TRP rating! Incidentally, it was the only “national” channel which had a presence in the area. It suggests something sinister about which we will never know much, as the government is unlikely to oblige the nation with critical information.

Here is a supremacist gloating over a “terrorist attack” because it would fetch votes and increase the viewership of the channel. 

He did not think about the women widowed and the children orphaned by the attack. The chats suggest that he knew at least three days in advance about the surgical strike at Balakot, deep inside the Pakistani territory.

The government has been claiming that only a top few, including the National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval, who was born long before India attained Independence and who retired from the Intelligence Bureau as Director long back, knew about the Balakot plan. This means that one of them briefed Goswami about it.

One can also conclude that the Pakistanis came to know about Goswami’s blah-blah which explains why the Balakot strike did not have much effect on Pakistan. 

Whoever in the government had briefed him about the impending surgical strike should be dealt with under the law. Yes, I know it is like asking for the moon, given the kind of culprits involved!

Goswami knew in advance about the plan to end Kashmir’s special status. The chat record also suggests that he has a criminal streak. One idea he discusses with his friend is that of “buying” a judge hearing a TRP case. Now, the questions are: Were they able to “buy” the judge? If the answer is in the affirmative, what price did they pay? Can the judge be allowed to remain in service? It is for the apex court to take suo motu action in this particular case.

Goswami has also made derogatory comments about Amit Shah, whom he calls a Chinese Panda, the Prime Minister, the late Arun Jaitley and Prakash Javadekar. He has also exposed the former Union minister for I&B Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore who “buried” a complaint against Goswami’s machinations against Doordarshan as a result of which the exchequer lost around Rs 52 crore. Should not Rathore be taken to task for helping the BJP’s apologist?

The chats also show that Goswami used his high connections with persons like Amit Shah and the Prime Minister’s Office for pecuniary benefits. Dasgupta wanted Goswami to influence the PMO and make him the PM’s Media Adviser. It is a different matter that he could not fulfil his promise.

The chats clearly show that Goswami was not a journalist but a crony capitalist who wanted to make money. Patriotism and nationalism were concepts alien to him because he could not see anything beyond the TRP ratings on which his success was measured. 

Journalists, by virtue of their profession, come into contact with those in power. There is nothing wrong in it. Such contacts are good to get advance information about anything and everything. However, the information so gained has to be passed on to the people, that is to their readers or viewers, subject, of course, to the national interest. In no case should it be used for pecuniary purposes.

A journalist is credible, only as long as he remains neutral. He or she should not identity himself or herself with any political party, ruling or in the Opposition. This does not mean that they should not have a political view of their own. They can but it should not cloud their opinions. In other words, credibility is of the essence in journalism.

The decline and fall of Goswami provide a good lesson for all journalists. Success can be measured to some extent by TRP ratings and circulation but they should not attempt anything hanky-panky to jack up the ratings and circulation. In short, there is no substitute for good old journalism in which journalists, like the Prophets of the Old Testament, were not afraid of telling the truth on the face of those in power.

ajphilip@gmail.com