Senior TV journalist Rajdeep Sardesai wonders whether it is time to “name and shame” news channels who boycotted the a march organized to protest attacks on journalists outside the Patiala House court premises.
“Absolutely,” agrees Barkha Dutt, another prominent TV journalist.
Related is the call, transmitted on many sites including Scroll.in, for a boycott of Arnab Goswami and his TV channel. Relevant, because Goswami’s TimesNow is one of the “2 channels” Rajdeep is pointing to.
So here is a thought to wrap your head around: You have the absolute right to organise, to protest, to espouse any cause that matters to you. Equally, I have the right decide whether I will join in, or not – and I owe no one any explanation for the choice I make.
Journalists belonging to the Times group were among those beaten up. There are multiple reports to this effect, including this eloquent one by the channel’s legal correspondent Meenakshi Bhanja.
It is fair to assume that the senior editors of the Times group are aware of these attacks. How they chose to respond to it – or even if they chose to respond to it at all – is a matter for the conscience of the editors, and of the group. It is their choice, and it is up to them to make choices they can live with.
It is not, however, up to me – or you – to mandate anyone’s presence, nor can you unilaterally attach “shame” to my absence.
Free press
As for calling for a boycott of Goswami and his channel – what are we, tone deaf?
There is no doubt in my mind that Goswami’s talk show on the JNU episode breached every canon of natural justice, fair play and journalistic ethics that we have been taught to hold dear and to abide by. But equally, there is no doubt in my mind that to call for a boycott of Goswami and/or his channel violates that most central of our rights – the right to free speech and to freedom of expression.
You cannot – can not – espouse the right of the journalist to tell it as he sees it, on the one hand, and on the other call for a boycott of someone who sees things differently from you. To suggest, as the article linked to above does, that if you care for press freedom it is time to boycott Goswami’s show is cognitive dissonance of an unimaginable degree.
How do you even fit "press freedom" and "boycott" in the same sentence?
The real test of your ideals is when they come slap up against your feelings. If you really believe in the ideal of free speech, therefore, you cannot call for the boycott of those whose views you disagree with. (Which, by the way, is why the #ShutDownNDTV hashtag inflicted on us earlier this year is also wrong.)
For the record, I am appalled by the attacks on journalists and others – just as I am appalled by the various attacks on people, their rights and their freedoms that take place every day in this country. I am appalled that the discourse around such attacks has been reduced to "whataboutery" and political point-scoring.
Also, for the record, I believe that by reducing debate and discussion to a gladiatorial blood sport, Goswami’s NewsHour does us a disservice of monumental proportions.
I was a guest on that show on December 30, 2009. Since then, I have been invited several times, and have always declined. That is my personal choice, one I have the right to make.
But call for a boycott? Really?
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