By Nishit Kunal
Its never hard to miss a show called The Newshour at 9 PM on Times Now where a young man (preferably young for 40 is still not so old) all dressed up in his linen suits, hair side parted and with a serious demeanor to exude calmly invites his guest to debate upon the recent hot topic which is being served in the hot media menu at that point of time and probably some 5 minutes later the man is suddenly seen ripping apart all the guests and clearly looks like a hot headed chef who blasts his team of cooks for not getting the right ingredients into the food.
The man who makes 9 pm one of the spiciest time of the day is none other than our very own Mr. Arnab Goswami.
Now Goswami is certainly a person we love to hate and probably I am not here to take a moral standing of what Mr. Goswami does but then due credit needs to be given to him for selling his channel impeccably well.
But then the tricky question arises. What Mr. Goswami does, is it for or against the journalistic ethics?
In a very simple manner what we have learnt is that a journalist needs to be unbiased and simply present the raw facts, facts which are unabridged and uncensored and yet stay away from throwing his own opinion but then somewhere Goswami also brings out the true pictures and in his process of divulging the truth he does two things. Raise his voice and ask some really tough questions.
But then is he right? Who gave him the bragging rights to raise his voice and opinionate himself? Probably its us who gave him those rights? Look closely at the show and you will see that instead of being the mediator, Mr. Goswami seems to have an opinion about the topic and the man never goes soft on those guests who never agreed to Goswamis opinions.
Its we people who has probably allowed him to take the center stage and in a time when we have more than 400 channels to our disposal, Goswami has changed the way News is supposed to be seen. The real problem lies in that we have seriously not learnt to take the person in picture seriously and he has become a butt of joke for we people for we never tune into the channel to tinker upon the seriousness of the issue but to see how badly Mr. Goswami mentally rapes his guest.
Now that is a serious problem!
Firstly its imperative that we understand that NEWS channels are all about producing the truth and there is no comical feeling the viewer can exude until and unless he is watching Cyrus Brochas The Week that Wasnt on CNN-IBN.
Nothing should be taken away from Mr., Goswami for his fearless attitude that has ruffled many guests whether its the Newshour or Frankly Speaking. Rahul Gandhi can be a very good example of that, but then a journalist is never opinionated. The fact that he asks some tough and straightforward questions but then there is no way Mr. Goswami should present his views because moment the viewer tunes in to the channel to see the anchor raising his voice and devouring his guests like a wild beast instead of showing what the news is all about and to fact who is right and who is wrong the essence of NEWS simply loses is value.
Its good to see the advent of a person who is not afraid to take on people head on and ask questions which can be very tough and uncomfortable to be answered and people love to see the guests being in a tough spot, but then two things needed to be taken care of.
Firstly in his advent to make Times now to be the No.1 channel (which it already is) Goswami should not deviate from his chosen path and run the race of gaining the most number of TRPs. Secondly the most important fact is that Mr. Goswami must understand that he is running a news channel and not anchoring a comedy show and he must work up a bit to make sure that people start taking him a bit more seriously and the only method to accomplish these facts and turn them into reality is not swaying one bit from the journalistic ethics and code of conducts. It will be better that he keeps it simple and just concentrate on what every journalist must do. Produce the truth.
During such hard times Mr. Arnab Goswami can be a both boon and a bane. Boon for he has been successful in unmasking the masked, he has shifted people out of their comfort zones; he has forced the people to answer his questions which belong to the Nation.
But he can also be a bane if people just tune in for getting entertained. He must not only entertain but produce news which will help him grow as a journalist and also help his channel as well.
Arnab Goswami has made the job of a journalist a tricky business and he must learn to grow out of those so called PJs and Trolls which keeps on circulating on social networking sites time and again but then also work hard to produce unedited, raw and unabridged news and information to the people and simply ask questions without forming his personal opinion.
Otherwise till now we can only say Goswami Go.
A student of Mass Communication from SOC, Manipal, Nishit holds a deep passion for writing, where his interests range from sports to movies to politics and anything he can scribble about. The author also loves to quiz and get quizzed and also debate with people on various topics. The author also likes to face the camera and has acted in various plays and dramas whenever given the opportunity A self-confessed movie addict and someone who calls himself as a sports junkie, the author loves to read books, watch movies, listen to music and just write on anything he finds interesting to write during his spare time. You can mail your queries or just anything to author at nishitkunal@rediffmail.com