Does Arnab matter?

IN Opinion | 15/12/2012

When we started journalism in the seventies, we were told that dog biting dog is not news. It is only when a man bites a dog that itbecomes news. Now it seems the opposite is true. A respected monthly magazine like Caravan has devoted 10 pages, yes 10, to the life and times of Arnab Goswami, chief editor of Times Now, even printing a large photograph of the man on its cover.

By dubbing it the 'Media Issue', does the magazine think it can get away with devoting reams of newsprint to an issue that is of no interest to even 20 per cent of Indian's 1.22 billion population? By being critical of Mr Goswami's 'autocratic', 'megalomaniac' style of functioning and mocking his alleged ''what Arnab thinks today India thinks tomorrow' attitude does the magazine think it can justify its own dumbing down by this 'expose' of an individual who is of no consequence to the vast majority of Indians. Do you think a magazine like the New Yorker, Newsweek or the Time would waste ten pages on an innocuous anchor who doesn’t reach even a quarter of the Indian population. Or are you saying that it is only urban elite India that matters? It is only the middle class that Manmohan Singh and Co created and families owning three or more cars that matters while the rickshaw puller in front of any housing colony toils it out in the same dhoti and kurta for the past 15 years?

The print media has been vibrant, especially regional media. And it was in the 80's that a change came about when the editor was brought down from his ivory tower with the advent of a bold new journalism helmed by M J Akbar who conceptualised The Telegraph, published from the then Calcutta, in 1982, with the focus on aam aadmi and developmental issues. Akbar too was abrasive, arrogant and dictatorial but there was no 'expose' of his style of functioning. However, The Telegraph, with which this writer was associated during its launch in 1982 and many years after that, did not have to worry about TRP ratings; its motto then was only to outclass the Old Lady of Chowringhee, The Statesman. One of the editors of that illustrious paper had told me then that The Statesman has no rivals, only contemporaries, a belief that was to be shattered soon enough.

It is indeed a shame that a magazine like Caravan has to come out with cover stories like this. It shows that English print journalism in India is in the pits by devoting so many pages to the likes of Goswami who do not have a clue about what the real India is all about while they debate about everything under the sun night after night.

Will these talking heads let us know how many Indians fall in the BPL category ' Below Poverty Line not Brash Provocative Line. Do they know a banana costs Rs 4 and an egg Rs 5 in this brave new urban India? Or is this issue of the magazine just a marketing gimmick? Does it have to do only with bottom lines, not uplift of minds?