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During a media interaction when Rahul Gandhi asked for a Joint Parliamentary Committee investigation into the stock market scam that caused retail investors to lose huge sums on 4 June, a reporter tells him that a JPC is a waste of public money.

By Prem Panicker
New Update
Media and Modi

Media matters... The Bible tells the story of the Judas kiss. I have no idea why I thought of that when I saw this picture — maybe you do. | Photo courtesy: DD News

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During a media interaction when Rahul Gandhi asked for a Joint Parliamentary Committee investigation into the stock market scam that caused retail investors to lose huge sums on 4 June, a reporter tells him that a JPC is a waste of public money.

“This is a BJP line,” Gandhi responded, and told the journalist that she should wear a BJP badge, or party-branded T-shirt, if she was going to ask such questions.

(NB: Joint Parliamentary Committees have in the past been constituted to investigate various fiscal improprieties, including in the stock markets — as for example the Harshad Mehta stock market scam of 1992 and the Ketan Parikh scam of 2001. It is interesting that in “new India” the JPC and its equivalents, a vital part of this or any democracy, is seen as a “waste of public money”. It is also worth noting that the reporter says it will cause disruptions in Parliament — a JPC by definition is bipartisan and has members from various parties including the ruling party.)

Rajdeep Sardesai, one of the senior anchors of the channel the reporter is attached to, was “deeply upset” at the injustice done to his colleague, who he endorsed as a “fearless journalist who reports with integrity”.

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This triggered an avalanche of clips exemplifying the supposed fearlessness and integrity of the journalist in question, including her stalking of Rhea Chakraborty and this one where, firing off Smriti Irani’s shoulder, she asks Priyanka Gandhi about her supposed connections with terrorists.

Sardesai then posted what I can only characterise as “self-pity on my plate”, with a sizeable side of exculpation.

Sardesai is just one example — the incident triggered considerable heartburn in media circles. Whatever be the case, you cannot treat journalists with such contempt, was the consensus — a feeling that was conspicuously absent when, in an “interview” given by Narendra Modi to four of Sardesai’s colleagues, he called the mediabuzdil”. (In fact, the senior anchors fell about laughing).

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An interview on 4 June featured psephologist turned political activist Prof Yogendra Yadav, with Sardesai and Rahul Kanwal as interlocutors. In the opener, Kanwal made the point that Yadav had repeatedly said he is no longer involved in psephology, that he had said he wouldn’t play the numbers game, and yet he did — and got closest to the actual outcomes than the star pollsters with all their resources.

(In passing, note Kanwal’s use of the word “anecdotal” to characterise Yadav’s methods — this is what the media has come to, in that it thinks criss-crossing the country, listening to actua

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