Saba Naqvi sheds all false pretensions of being a journalist

In a democracy, the judiciary and media are major organizations that are supposed to be neutral. The duty of a journalist is to report the events in the country in an impartial manner, regardless of their personal opinions. However, in India which happens to be the world’s largest democracy; journalists, time and again lobby for political parties which are in accordance to their own personal interests. This has recently occurred over social media platforms in the context of the AAP-Congress alliance talks.

Saba Naqvi, a seasoned journalist and well known political commentator has openly supported an alliance of opposition parties to defeat BJP. Saba Naqvi is the daughter of Saeed Naqvi who is also a senior journalist, political commentator and interviewer. She has written four books – In Good Faith (2012), Capital Conquest (2015), Shades of Saffron: From Vajpayee to Modi (2018), Politics of Jugaad: the coalition handbook (March 2019), and regularly writes for left-liberal publications like DailyO, NDTV, and Scroll.

Recently when Radhika Ramasesham, a journalist tweeted that Congress party is playing vote-splitter to the Mahagathbandhan in Uttar Pradesh, Naqvi asked Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav to take due cognizance of the matter and sort their differences for the ‘greater good of defeating BJP’. The disdain of Lutyens’ media towards the Modi government is very visible from the overall reportage of the Modi government’s performance.

The journalistic community in India has always been aligned with left wing parties. From the Nira Radia Tapes to Shekhar Gupta’s military coup story, it is very clear that Indian media is involved in power-brokering and defending the interests of Congress as well as other left-wing parties. The Congress party has nurtured and nourished it since the days of the state’s monopoly over media. The state monopoly over media ended in the last few decades but the subservience of left-liberal media to the opposition remains the same. The people in the media still pursue fear and rumor-mongering on the direction of their political masters.

The standards of television have gone so low that informed debate just cannot be expected from them. All they indulge in, is a PR exercise for the opposition. Majority of the anchors do not have enough intellectual rigor to present their views on any topic, they read the lines written by the production team from a teleprompter. So the ideological bias of the anchor becomes the popular opinion and the whole show ends up being more of a PR exercise than a political debate. A lot of TV news channels are guilty of the same offence. If this continues, web channels with better content will finish the TV industry in the coming decade.

The short-sighted and ideologically polarized anchors and journalists particularly in English media tried to create a false narrative of communalism, unemployment, fascism in the last five years. The Indian media exaggerates every issue and the TV shows lack mature content. Prime Time shows on TV give a sense that the world will fall apart on just the next day. The media needs to behave more responsibly and should have national interest as its top priority. 

The journalists should report the issues in an impartial manner, otherwise whatever credibility is left will also vanish slowly. If journalists like Saba Naqvi who claim to be independent openly work for their percieved greater good of defeating the BJP, people will not trust the media in the upcoming years.