According to Jagannathan, "By making himself bigger than the channel he owns, Goswami runs the risk of making himself the news, with the channel having nothing more than him as the asset. This is dangerous. A channel dependent on one person is vulnerable."
Jagannathan's "accusation" comes amidst Goswami, founder of the right-wing Republic TV, refusing to apologize for claiming that the car in which he sat during the 2002 Gujarat riots was attacked by a communal mob barely 50 metres off the chief minister's residence, a claim his ex-boss Rajdeep Sardesai has strongly refuted.
According to Jagannathan, "The problem for Goswami is that, unlike other journos who may be wrong-footed by such gaffes, he cannot just acknowledge a mistake and move on", adding, the result has been, Goswami is being seen as “plagiarising” Sardesai’s experience, "which gave the channel (India Today TV), which hosts Sardesai, the opportunity to take potshots at him in the name of media ethics."
Pointing out that "Republic TV continues down the same path that (Goswami) trod at Times Now", owned by the Times of India group, Jagannathan says, it means that "there is little differentiation from the old Arnab Goswami". However, what Goswami forgets in the process is, he "is up against a strategist like Samir Jain and the marketing machine at Times Group", which has "more resources than the Republic."
This has made Times Now attack Goswami "from two ends", says Jagannathan. "While Times Now continues as before under Rahul Shivshankar, Navika Kumar and Anand Narasimhan, at the other end the group has launched other TV brands like Mirror Now to corner him."
Also criticizing Goswami for continuing with his Times Now ways, where one found him screaming at participants, Jagannathan insists, "It is one thing to be edgy and politically incorrect, quite another to make the screen the scene of multiple screams where no one can be heard, and nothing is registered as good or bad argument. At some point, his audiences may just tire of this. You can’t be Times Now Squared to win this game. You must be different."
Insisting that there is a need to know why is "Goswami not able to acknowledge a mistake and just move on like the others did, including Fareed Zakaria of CNN, who has been repeatedly accused of plagiarism, but the channel continues to stand by him", Jagannathan says, this is because, "unlike other anchors, who merely have viewers and audiences, Goswami has a fan following."
"When you have large, uncritical fan clubs, you face the same problem that a Modi has with his uncritical bhakts, or Bollywood’s heroes have with diehard worshippers: you have to live up to their image of you. Modi is 'chhappan inch ki chhati', and so he cannot do anything non-macho for fear of his fans", says Jagannathan.
"A filmstar who bashes 100 villains on the screen cannot be shown as someone who is afraid of dogs or can’t actually mount a horse. A Goswami is always right, and mistakes acknowledged by him will not go down well with his fan-base... He cannot be seen making an abject apology," believes Jagannathan.
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Click HERE to watch what Goswami said, courtesy AltNews.in
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