And left even the PM embarrassed
KS Muralidharan
When even a diehard fan feels let down by his idol, you know it is the most heart-breaking and unkindest cut of all.
At the recently concluded Republic Summit 2023, the channel’s celebrity owner and iconic anchor, Arnab Goswami, ended up as a huge embarrassment, and that too, before Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
An embarrassment for his fans, surely, and if you did not notice, for Prime Minister, Modi as well.
Before millions of viewers, the Republic TV hit the ultimate summit as the idiot box. And sadly, the idiot on the box was India’s most popular prime time prima donna.
In a run up to the Summit, the marketing pitch for the mega Modi event was at full tilt, with Arnab breathlessly reminding us about the address by the “Hon’ble Prime Minister” a zillion times.
And on the D-day, his introductory remarks before Modi’s address was acutely embarrassing. Every alternate line in his speech was prefaced with Pradhan Mantriji. Every third line was about how Republic TV was on the way to become like, India’s right wing Rupert Murdoch in the global media. Every fourth line was about how Republic TV was with Pradhan Mantriji, behind Pradhan Mantriji, for Pradhan Mantriji and so on and so forth.
For the discerning eye, Hon’ble Pradhan Mantriji was also visibly embarrassed.
Through all the entire fawning and cringe-worthy shiploads of praise showered by Arnab, Modi sat with an impassioned look on his face, revealing no expression, not even a hint of a smile. Not even a token acknowledgement of Arnab’s generous overdose of compliments. Modi did lighten up later but that was in response to a joke about how Arnab was beginning to tone down his decibel levels.
After Arnab praising Pradhan Mantriji to the skies, Modi gave us a peep into his mind, saying he did not pay heed to what he actually said and was only noting Arnab’s comfort level in speaking Hindi.
Ironically, this was an unexpected and the biggest takeaway of the event: That Modi does not fall for flattery. That he doesn’t even lend an ear to it. Even if it is from someone whose loyalty is unquestioned.
Arnab Goswami can be forgiven for being a staunch supporter of right wing and in general the BJP. His much touted Nation First approach certainly lends clarity to the channel’s editorial policy. As a counter to the Lutyen’s lobby and the left-liberal ecosystem, Arnab is either necessary, or a necessary evil, depending on how you view him. When he left Times Now, millions followed him to his own Republic channel. When he was wrongly jailed by the Uddhav Thackeray led government of Maharashtra, millions rooted for him, while the Lutyen’s lobby paid only lip service.
Today, Republic TV may well be India’s best known and most popular channel with the widest captive viewership. But the cracks in Brand Arnab were already visible to the discriminating viewer.
First, it was the prime time debate format which he more or less patented and made popular in India’s drawing rooms. His loud approach which he flaunted and justified openly as reflecting the people’s aspirations and taste, ended up producing at best cacophony which you barely tolerate, and at worst, a public spectacle of uncontrolled verbal diarrhea.
But all this was forgiven because he stood up for the patriotic and the nationalist, for the Hindu majority, for those who were against the colonial mindset and narrative spun by the left-liberal ecosystem for the past 7 decades.
If listening to cacophony is the price to be paid for giving a voice to the voiceless majority, and for those who feel overtly proud of Indian culture and Indian tradition, it was worth enduring, for his diehard fans.
But did we want to see Arnab downsize himself to giving a college day style address, and basking in an overweening and unnecessary praise for the PM?
Did the PM come to the Republic Summit to hear about how Arnab staked his all to start a media startup? Did he have to pitch his channel and use the Summit as a marketing deck, before the PM? How was all this in any way connected to the Transformation theme of the Summit?
In contrast, at a similar event of his competitor, India Today, Aroon Poorie in his address before the PM, referred to the lack of any leaks from the Modi government about say, a cabinet reshuffle or policy tweaks, which had dried up all scoops for his channel, and joked about how Modi would respond to this saying, ‘why would he bother to run his shop?’.
The irony is inescapable: The Lutyen’s lobby may well be the mainstream media’s ugly underbelly, but it cloaks its fault-lines with smart savvy. While Arnab Goswami may well be blessed with everything that a TV anchor yearns for, but sadly he seems intent on becoming the Medium AND the Message.
Arnab’s prime time debates are not just loud and garrulous, but woefully lack intellectual depth and objective analysis and are too predictive.
Of course, this is true of most if not all channels, as Arnab Goswami, like it or not, is the trend-setter.
For his fans, Arnab Goswami, as the counter to the extremely reactionary and more often than not, anti-national, left-liberal media ecosystem, is the only alternative in the mainstream media.
For their own sake, Arnab has to reinvent himself and yet again set another new trend — this time, with more intellectual heft and analytical depth albeit in a toned down avatar.
And then resist the temptation to behave like a fan-boy of people he admires, be it the PM or anyone.