By Anirban Bhattacharyya
The bells had been ringing for quite some time… like the irritating car alarm that gets set off accidentally at 5am, by the building security as they go to wash the car in a Mumbai multistorey complex. You lie in bed, curse and hope that the alarm goes off. This week the alarm stopped ringing. There was nothing left to protect.
The fourth pillar which had been tottering like an unstable, inebriated uncle at a wedding, finally gave way. The deed had been done. The relatives had continuously plied the uncle with enough liqour, ensuring his collapse, taking down the marriage tent with him.
NDTV saw the exit of the Roys and then senior journalist Ravish Kumar. What set Pranoy, Ravish and NDTV apart from the barking school of television news reporting that most news anchors and channels have degenerated to, was their calm and mature approach to news.
Old school? Definitely.
Dignified and Respectable? Yes.
High TRP? Not as much as the madhouses where every anchor tries to outdo each other with their spittle-emanating acts.
When most news channels across India go zig… NDTV has always done a zag.
NDTV has been accused of being Pro-Congress, a Libtard institution, anti-BJP, Leftist and more. These labels hitherto fell off their OB vans like they did not have enough glue on them. The one thing NDTV assured the viewer was that the news was unbiased and sans any agenda.
Magsaysay award recipient Ravish Kumar has been one of the few voices from the world of Indian journalism who has stood firm, holding his ground, against the raging storm of trolls, fake news, bigotry and hate politics.
Ravish and the Roys had managed to do so, as the pillars in the house had stood firm, supporting them.
The house, now, has a new landlord. The Roys and Ravish have decided
Anticipating a revamp and the new paint-job of the house, many Indians have followed Ravish from the TV screens to his Youtube channel, where within 24 hours, the number of his subscribers increased by a million. He currently has 2.32 million subscribers, and it is increasing everyday.
Ravish had once said, ‘Not all battles are fought for victory – some are fought to tell the world that someone was there on the battlefield.’ There are now multiple mediums and battlefields. And Ravish refuses to go ‘gentle into that good night’ as he hopefully will contiue to ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’
Many Indians have felt that there has been a slow systematic take-over of the news media outlets to enable the dissemination of information and agenda to the masses without any opposition or differing views. I am sure this is just another conspiracy theory, right?
On August 8, 1950 U.S. President Harry S. Truman in a special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, had stated, “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
The bell has stopped ringing. The pillar is broken.
Who will stand up and say that the Sun does not rise in the West?