Why we care Arnab Goswami has quit Times Now

A columnist called him, without irony, an “Establishment Rottweiler”. The Economist dissed the state of Indian media in a recent bird’s-eye-view piece, basing its criticism nearly entirely on his brand of news presentation: brash, nationalist, very angry. He has many detractors and presumably many more admirers who, lest they come across as bigoted, use the anonymity of social media to express their appreciation of him.

When news that Arnab Goswami had resigned from Times Now broke on Twitter on Tuesday evening, it was favourited and retweeted with all the urgency that Goswami expects his viewers to employ in responding to burning news topics. Chief among the many changes he single-handedly ushered in the media space was his evangelisation of Twitter and Facebook as tools to wield in the fight for public opinion, the long-winded hashtags blinking against fiery graphics on his signature show, The Newshour.

Goswami launched Times Now ten years ago at a time when a number of NDTV alums, Rajdeep Sardesai the other prominent name among them, moved out to begin their own ventures. But unlike the others, Goswami gave up NDTV’s reclining persona to fashion an aggressive face for Times Now. Most of the things that we associate with news today – primetime panels, fierce debates, even shouting matches – are his contribution to the Indian media space.

But more than the atmospherics, Goswami questioned a fundamental premise of Indian news whose leading lights were so far to the left that they were ill-equipped to moderate the most challenging issues of the day. His greatest contribution to the media space is his abandonment of a needless political correctness that obfuscates issues on the altar of hurt feelings.

On terror, he has been brutal – his systematic takedown of Pakistan’s wicked ways is a joy to behold for anyone outside the Lutyens’ zone, whose eminences have accused him of war-mongering. On women’s rights, he has spearheaded the demand for a Uniform Civil Code to bring gender parity to marital and succession laws. On VVIP privileges, he sent even senior ministers running for cover. (To those raising a red flag to this argument, Goswami recently denied that he had been granted “Y” category security by the government.)

Underneath his often-annoying hectoring, Goswami gave free rein to arguments that were long banished from prime time news. His coverage of the JNU standoff was a turning point in the debate over nationalism, and he spoke for many when he dissected the limits of freedom of speech not on grounds of hurt sentiments but on the impermissibility of invoking violence against the Indian state and its people.

His eager adoption of the contrarian position fed into his resounding success, as Times Now upstaged rivals to become - and remain - the most watched English news channel. Expectedly, he was painted as a sellout, again without irony, by a media establishment that was caught napping by his willingness to ask uncomfortable questions.

To the elite, Goswami remains something of an enigma. He is of them, having attended both Oxford and Cambridge, yet he stridently refuses to play by their rules. His gruffness is denounced most vehemently by those who really have a problem with his politics - they waste no time couching their distaste for him in their remembrance of a more genteel media setup,  entirely oblivious to how skewed and undemocratic that setup was, how blindingly one-sided its priorities, how tiny-minded its stalwarts.

In its breathless piece, which jumps from Fawad Khan to NDTV’s canned interview of P Chidambaram, The Economist raised concerns about the growing corporatisation of Indian media. The piece failed to mention that Goswami has been blessedly immune from such pressures at Times Now. If anything, that group, with its many properties, has a hard time speaking in one voice, making for a rich, if unwieldy (and perhaps unwitting), tribute to a spirit of dissent.

Goswami has not always succeeded. He could have done more to dispel allegations of his closeness to the BJP, the better for his nightly diatribes to carry conviction. When he interviewed the Prime Minister earlier this year, he was, if not fawning, not exactly the ferocious investigator of The Newshour. To be sure, it is impossible in our staged media setup to interrogate the Prime Minister, but it is a measure of Goswami’s public perception that his lack of belligerence was attributed to unsavoury reasons.

Be that as it may, Goswami deserves a break. He has packed more energy and indignation during his decade at Times Now than most journalists manage to do in a lifetime. He may continue to lose friends in his fraternity but beyond the ivory tower, his admirers will be keenly watching his next move.

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