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Any information that Radia got about what happened within the Congress would help her to this end. At this point of time, Raja was already under the scanner for the 2008 sale of 2G spectrum, and the PM did not want him back in the Cabinet. From the conversations, it is clear Barkha knew that even within the DMK, Radia was doing her utmost to ensure it was A Raja, not Dayanidhi Maran, who finally got the telecom portfolio. Among the portfolios on offer was telecom, and Radia was the top PR representative of the Tata Group of Ratan Tata, which has a major interest in the telecom sector via its firm Tata Teleservices Ltd, and also of the Reliance Group of Mukesh Ambani, which had a direct interest in the sector via Reliance Infocomm before the Ambani brothers split.įor any political journalist worth her salt, the alarm bells would have gone off at this stage, and should have led to one of the biggest stories related to government formation in this country: ‘Tata telecom PR chief handles negotiations for telecom portfolio.’ Did you happen to see this story on NDTV?īarkha not only failed to do this story, by her own admission, she actually passed on information that she, as a journalist, had acquired from the Congress to the head of a PR agency handling two of the biggest corporate groups in the country, each with more than mere curiosity about who gets into the Cabinet. Barkha makes the claim that Radia was a valid news source for the DMK camp. Negotiations were underway between the DMK and Congress for places in the Union Cabinet. The context in which Barkha was talking to Radia is important. It confirms what the transcripts clearly indicate, an exchange of information between her and Niira Radia. Valid journalism.’ Let us consider the scenario most charitable to Barkha, where, contrary to the evidence of the taps, we accept her claim that she may not have made the calls she promised to in the course of the conversations. She gave info on Karunanidhi, and sought my analysis on what Cong may do next. In her own defence, she has tweeted, ‘Radia was a valid news source for DMK camp. Take Barkha Dutt’s case first, because the case against Vir Sanghvi is even more extensive. This is necessary because they seem to suggest what they did was in the nature of the job of most journalists in this country who deal with political matters. But there is reason to go beyond the voice of public opinion and reflect on what the Radia transcripts, which neither Barkha Dutt nor Vir Sanghvi has denied, actually say about the journalism they practise. One, of course, is that the very media that resorts to the court of public opinion in calling for the resignation of ministers and bureaucrats for perceived wrongdoing is ignoring the upheaval in non-traditional media such as Twitter. There are various counter-arguments that can be made. In no case did I act on those requests as anybody in the government will know.’ I received many calls from different sources during that period.
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Out of a desire to elicit more information from these sources, we are generally polite. To call this process “lobbying” is a serious and defamatory distortion of journalistic practices.’ Vir Sanghvi has stated, ‘While gathering news, journalists talk to a wide variety of sources from all walks of life, especially when a fast-moving story is unfolding. NDTV on behalf of Barkha Dutt has argued, ‘At every stage effective journalism involves engagement with a multitude of characters in the process of gathering news and information. Since the story broke, both Barkha Dutt, through NDTV, and Vir Sanghvi, on his website, have posted clarifications on the tapes. This closing of ranks betrays one of the weaknesses of the media in this country: eager as we are to hold others up to scrutiny, we shy away from the truth where our own are concerned.
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Newspapers, bar The Hindu, have restricted their discussion to the editorial rather than news pages, and again without naming Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt-the equivalent of discussing the allotment of 2G spectrum without naming A Raja.
Barkha dutt resigns tv#
The only time the issue figured on Indian TV channels was when Times Now and CNN-IBN hosted half-an-hour shows on corporate lobbyists without mentioning the names of the two most prominent journalists who figure on the tapes-Vir Sanghvi, advisory editorial director of Hindustan Times, and Barkha Dutt, group editor of NDTV. Here is why.Ī week has passed without India’s mainstream media-print or TV, bar Outlook magazine and Mail Today newspaper-following up on the story of the Radia tapes that was broken by Open.
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In their response to Open’s X-Tapes exposé, Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi are defending the indefensible.