Defending Vir Sanghvi

Hi all ye’twitterers and bloggers

You people have just knocked out these mainstream media people who did a pretty late job of reporting on the Radia and Sanghvi episode. But, when they did, customarily they bought in old sods, who did nothing but hammed on television.

But did you ever wonder that you people are giving Sanghvi, who you loathe tremendously, more air time and spaces in your columns by discussing him?

Oh sorry, you never discussed him; instead you discussed - did Barkha Dutt sleep with Vir Sanghvi, Is Vir Sanghvi Congress chamcha or agent, his foxy and yellow journalism and this one’s takes the cake – ban mainstream media, they all are liars, boycott NDTV and HT, this issue should not die down etc…etc…

Of course, you had victory!

You had Vir Sanghvi pulled out his most most read Counterpoint column from the newspaper, you proclaimed to the world that WE set media ethics and you made Vir Sanghvi apologise to his readers, if he let them down.

But on a larger note, the recent developments taking place, buys me an entire new story. A story where news people become news.

N. Ram, the editor-in-chief of The Hindu was on Headlines Today channel and was not convinced with Vir’s apologies or his pulling out his column from HT and therefore he hopped from one TV Station to another, showcasing his disbelief as to such things happening and he wasn’t aware of it. He believes we journalists must raise the bar. If this happened with New York Times (NYT) or Financial Times (FT), they would have thrown the journalists out, but look at here with the HT. He believed after all that, HT should throw Vir out, of course, so people can actually switch to The Hindu. The Hindu doesn’t tolerate such kind of things. And you tweeters, if you ever accuse me any time that I am China’s chamcha or agent, I will not sack myself, I will just raise the bar of reportage in my newspaper.

Shoba Narayan, a Mint columnist, if at all you have heard about her, wrote in the newspaper that she had some reservations about Sanghvi because he led a great lifestyle and she didn’t. She didn’t get a chance to refuse such over-the-top hospitality that is offered to Vir because, well, admittedly she didn’t get it at the very first place. What if she would have got such freebies etc. that she accuses Vir of getting it without any shred of evidence? Of course, she would grab it with both hands; after all she writes about, The Good Life column in Mint’s Lounge magazine but gee, doesn’t get to live the good life which Vir has.

Samar Harlankar, an HT insider, finally sat down to write a lengthy piece on dangerous liaisons. I thought he would be candid about Vir Sanghvi, defending Vir’s positions etc. Yet the entire column was about media, politics and corporate nexus as if we don’t know anything about this. His position on keeping a distance from politicians, corporate is flawed. A corporate journalist would know or believe to know a great deal about a honcho and same with a political journalist. You keep a distance from them sounds morally good, but who would not want his first big story, who would not want to interact with their camps and who would like to be still reporters fielding questions from the ground distantly and not be a columnist and where would you draw the line of distance, tell me?

Karan Thapar, who discussed at length in CNN IBN about Vir Sanghvi’s conduct and sermon us in his HT column on Media’s the Message forgot very conveniently that a) Advani used to call him intermediary (somebody please explain me the meaning and context of all these words – lobbyist, go-betweens, intermediary etc) and b) he didn’t think of reporting a story of 2001 Agra Summit and twenty clandestine meeting which he had set up between Ashraf Qazi, Pakistan’s High Commissioner and LK Advani. Instead he reported it in 2008 under his self-indulgent column, The Untold Advani Story (and it was really crap I tell you). How easily then he points fingers on others that cabinet formation development by lobbyist was a good story and Vir and others should report it or that journalists should not be intermediaries or go-betweens.

Well, everybody loves a media circus.

And everybody wants to tame the tiger, when prominent journalist like Vir Sanghvi is involved who can brazenly attack the homosexual sod Sathya Sai Baba, call Modi a mass murderer, satire Jayalalitha as a sleaze ball and name Bal Thankre as the old boy and get away with all this yet sees an ever increasing readership to his columns either by his criticizers or by his avid followers. Which journalist does not want to fit in Vir Sanghvi’s shoes, ever?

Vir Sanghvi has defended well too much in his columns and in television so without going into the rights and wrongs of his doings, let me just jump down to few questions which the bloggers / twitters forgot to raise.

Never was Vir Sanghvi’s and others right to privacy questioned or discussed? We all acted as voyeurs getting a pleasure at this sudden revelation listening to how things worked out in real.

Tapping the telephone lines makes a grass-root journalists work pretty easy and confortable and after that everybody participates in bashing. We the tweeples said, don’t ever challenge national interest over right to privacy? It’s the national interest which is at stake when corporates lobbies for a minister, journalists help etc. So tomorrow we can tape bankers, next lawyers, doctors and we will have new moralistic codes for every service industries. Never mind, we will have several law suits in our overburdened courts on right to privacy and we will always be under surveillance just to protect our great national interest. We gonna broom and cleanse the system!

Vir Sanghvi was accused that he told Nira Radia that he would do a scripted interview with Mukesh. There was no interview with Mukesh as such and what I dig out was a column on his interviewing style which he himself wrote under the byline Sonia in camera, appeared on the rediff site, where he wrote, "The second surprise was the manner in which she behaved during the interview. She was clearly nervous in front of the camera and so I suggested that we do a dummy take. That is, the cameras would not roll but I would pretend that we were on the air, do my piece to camera, turn to her and ask a question. Her job was to answer this dummy question just so that she could get a feel of what the interview would be like". Of course you would point out, this is dummy interview and not a scripted interview and Vir Sanghvi told Nira Radia about a scripted interview. But the question is - where is the scripted interview or any interview with Mukesh Ambani?

Coming to tapes, Vir contends that these are selective tapes doctored and leaked, you may find several others unleaked which bears testimony to the fact that I am not guilty or which bears testimony that I asked the Tatas, the Ambanis and A Raja, to deposit in my Swiss account wads of cash(okie, I am just kidding).

But unfortunately, we don’t have other tapes and we don’t know the complicity of other media people involved into this.

But hey, tweeters! You handily forgot about all this and targetted the most popular ones in this media circus. After all, Raja was promoted through Sanghvi. Radia thanked many people in media but it was Sanghvi who whispered in Sonia’s ears. And how did you know this, you just guessed it and disregarded his defences that he never had a word with anybody in the Congress party and he just stringed along the source.

Now onto his Counterpoint columns, which Nira Radia earnestly dictated him on Mukesh Ambani. Hell, Nira must have gone bonkers to see the next day that the entire column was not as promised, it was about some fat oligarchs etc and only a breezing reference was to Mukesh Ambani. It was fair and not slanted towards Mukesh’s side also. Few days later, Vir again wrote a second column on the brothers, readers liked that column so much that it was the “most read column” on his website at that time. Now it turns out that both were not objectively written and they were dictated.

Couldn’t there be a chance that the first column was not objectively written and it was dictated and the second one was objectively written to rectify his prior mistakes and therefore he mentions he met Nira Radia from Mukesh’s side and he met some Tony from Anil’s side to get a perspective on his piece. But tweeters and you’ll bloggers dont get convince easily. But also, you dont ask yourself anything about Tony whom he also met and what transpired between them or about his second column where he just knocked down the Ambani brothers from both ends.

I will tell you something, this column writing thing whether objectively written or not is pretty subjective stuff so let’s not presume things up and ambush it. Lets read the column and decide for ourselves.

Last, were Open and Outlook magazines correct in pulling out these tapes and printing it thereby increasing their circulation?

Of course you are a fool if you believed that they wanted to send a larger message, such as media ethics or corruption in media or power nexus etc. But if you are completely in favour of free speech just as I am then tapping the phones and reporting the news to readers holds correct.

However, as it turns out in this case, sending a wrong signal and making Vir Sanghvi discontinue his columns which was widely read and making him a joke in front of TV where lunatics discuss self-righteously over moral and journalistic code of conduct, does not do fairness to people who believe in him and hold him in high regard. Your reporting in the magazine, without a clear conclusion, just left the readers, bloggers, tweeters with a question - who should we trust upon - Vir Sanghvi or you?

Regards

your fella