The Roy’s and the likeminded Lutyenised media have been caught unarmed, not by the CBI this time, but by the Foreign Correspondents Club. The much talked about raids on the Roy’s residence recently have suddenly evoked strange, yet unanimous discourses by the media fraternity which awakes to please the Doctor of journalism and his wife, grasping the opportunity to stand in support of the ‘agenda brigade’. Prannoy Roy’s residence was recently raided by the CBI which suspected money laundering to have taken place by him and his wife. The income Tax department had earlier caught Prannoy Roy for siphoning of 53.84 crores into his personal account from NDTV. In June 2016, the Income Tax Department had exposed a huge fraud by Prannoy Roy and reported the same to the Police Economic Offense Wing and Enforcement Directorate.
In all this, NDTV, suddenly realizing that they could be exposed further, came up with this self-conceived theory that the current government was trying to shut anyone who didn’t align themselves with its ‘agenda’. The anchor of this same channel became very touchy when Sambit Patra of the BJP said that NDTV was a channel with an agenda. However, wasn’t NDTV supposed to herald freedom of speech? Or does it allow only university students to preach the said freedom? It is because of such reasons that this channel has lost a single jot of credibility. NDTV must realize that had its office been raided, they perhaps could satisfy us with this theory. However, the private residence of a money hoarder was raided, who happens to be the editor of this non-existent channel.
Meanwhile, The “Press Club of India” circus played out on the 9th of June, with all the intellectually enlightened editors coming in support of Prannoy and Radhika Roy. The editors put out statements to prove Indian media was being forced to succumb to the Fascist pressure of the government.
These editors must realize that we trust the government, even with its faults, and that we would choose the government over this pack of elite and compromised editors any day. However, after all this drama of a united media front against the government, and the Lutyen’s media slipping into a self-congratulatory mode for having achieved this so called ‘unity’, was taken aback when the Foreign Correspondents Club put out the following statement:
“This is to clarify that the FCC was NOT (sic) involved in the meeting the Press Club of India had organised last week on the NDTV owners problems with the CBI. We are for freedom of the press. However, the I&B ministry and the CBI say the action against NDTV owners has nothing to do with press freedom.”
This proves the image of channels like NDTV in the international space. The statement seems to me a direct satire at the learned journalists of India who don’t understand what the CBI had to say after the raid. NDTV has long lost it’s ever achieved ‘glory’. It must understand that Indian’s are not foolish. May they realize soon that they are a shame on the profession of journalism and that they have been reduced to a joke, this time, internationally.