 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Panujay Guhatakutta, of course a noted media figure. And we are going to discuss the recent controversy about ABP, which has seen the sacking of two major figures in ABP and also one of the anchors being taken off the air. Panujay, Pune Prasoon Bhashmi has now gone public that how this whole issue came about because he could not take out Modi's visual image, shall we say, from the government pronouncements. And he had been asked that Modi's name should not appear in any criticism of government. And his picture also shouldn't appear. And the consequence of that was he said when he looked at all the press releases, all the pronouncements of all the programs of the government, whatever the government is promised to do, all of them has Mr. Modi's picture in it. So, that was virtually an impossible task. Do you think that this is now made open what we have always known, the ABP case, that essentially media today being controlled by big business houses, the consequence has been that they are not willing to offend the government, particularly Mr. Modi. Because he was told apparently that Mr. Modi is not to be touched, others could be criticized. Pune Prasoon Bhashmi, who had earlier worked with Ajdaq and now recently with ABP News, has, I mean, what he has written and which has been published in the wire in Hindi and in English says more than this. What you are saying is absolutely correct. He says the management or the owners, the proprietor if you like, his name is Othideb Sharkar. He happens to be the son of Arup Sharkar and the Sharkar family are controlling the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group. They said you can criticize the government's policies but don't criticize the prime minister or don't show his face or don't show his picture. So, he says how can you do it? In criticism. So, he says there are over a hundred schemes which have been announced by this government and each and every scheme has Mr. Modi's picture. So, how can he show even a poster or a signboard about the scheme without showing the picture of the prime minister but it goes much more than that. It goes much deeper than that. There are three or four very important things he said. One is the level of intolerance. Here is a woman farmer from Kanked district in Chhattisgarh who has been tutored to say good things about how her income has doubled in front of the prime minister. So, when their reporters go and examine the reality on the ground, first they are dissuaded. After the first story, the Chhattisgarh government puts out a retraction. Then they go again and speak with them and they bust this whole myth. And before you know it, Pune Prasoon Bhachpai is asked to go. Now, what is interesting is before he left, suddenly, mysteriously, during prime time when his program Masterstroke was being made, suddenly the screen would black out. Electronic interference which had to be done by telecommunication infrastructure being disturbed in some way. Now, hear me out. What he said is something even more shocking. He said there are something like 200 individuals who have been employed, and though he hasn't mentioned them, been employed by Bessel, the broadcast equipment corporation of India Limited, which is a public sector company, and their job is to monitor the television channels. He says 150 of them are involved only in monitoring the channels, 25 members trying to influence the shape it should get, and the remaining 25 reviewed the final content. And he goes on further to say whenever any channel puts out anything which is critical of the government, officials and the prime minister's office are involved. Now, it doesn't stop there. He says, and he alludes to them that before his program was taken off air and he was asked to leave, one particular advertiser, Patanjali Ayurveda, which is headed or its chief mentor happens to be Baba Ramdev, and as you know, it advertises his products quite a lot on television channels. He spends a lot of money on the advertisements. Stop advertising. And after he leaves and somebody else replaces him on that same program, he's back to advertising in them. So I think what is very, very clear is the manner in which the government is putting pressure. So let's summarise what you just said. A pressure directly on the management. And it's very clear why because he says how Mr. Sharkar or Othidev Sharkar actually rushed in to the newsroom and he said, stop the broadcast, literally. And then Millind Khandekar, one of the three people who had to be in marginalised leave, he says, how can you do this? There's a live broadcast happening. He says, no, you can't do it. And in front of everybody, there was a big tantrum that took place. So what is the criticism in the show? If it continues, of course, the management gets upset, etc. But the two other things you just said, and they are really very worrying. One is the electronic, shall we say, line, electronic pipe, which goes from the studio to the viewers. That was being disturbed. Now that is really totally malefied government action if that is true. If it can be established that the government had a role to play. Or even if it can be shown that somebody actually may have paid money to these cable operators to somehow disrupt that. The cable operators is only one part. As you know, it goes to the satellite. So there are multiple satellites. So that's a very difficult route. The route is actually from the studio to wherever it is being uplinked. So let's leave that as one issue. And the third issue that you are talking is the advertisers who also were pressured by the government, or they on their own decided to aid the government. The other part you were talking about is that there is a 200 team to essentially monitor and tell the government. Let me read out exactly what Pune Prasoon Bajpayee has written. He said there would be 30 to 40 instances of disturbances in the satellite links. He said after this happened first day, second day on the third day, there was a consensus within the channel that the viewers should be informed about this. Therefore on the 19th of July, the channel started airing a message from the morning itself. Saying in the last few days, you must have noticed there were some disturbances in the signal during our prime time telecast. We are trying to locate the cause of the problem which has arisen all of a sudden and we are trying our utmost to fix it. And we request you to be with us children. This was one of these disclaimers. Now, it happened only in that one hour. Absolutely. Now listen to me. After this message was put out, it was suddenly taken off. Two hours ago. The message was taken off. That's right, the message. So it's truly amazing the kind of pressure that is being put on anybody who is critical of the government. And now let me also tell you what the wire has reported. It is said during informal discussions with journalists in parliament, Mr. Amit Shah has virtually acknowledged that he's going to show ABP News its place. And I want to add a little twist to this story. When Arun Shuri, Yashwant Sinha, Prashant Bhushan went public and said that the Raphael scam is the biggest scandal of its kind and he says none other than the prime minister of India should be held criminally culpable. The telegraph, which belongs to the same group, put it up on the front page as the lead story. Now it's interesting, maybe because the telegraph is in English, maybe because it is published from Kolkata, maybe it really reaches a different audience, from the audience that is there for the Hindi channel. And it's been very clear that the TRPs had started going up and now the TRPs have fallen down. I mean, so the whole covert manner in which any dissent is being sought to be suppressed is really scary. I mean, people talk about the emergency, this is the new emergency. There is one distinction I must make here between the emergency and this one. Emergency was explicit direct censorship by the government. Here it's a tie up between the big business houses and the government and the fact that media is far more centralized in the hands of just a few entities today. That is also the threat. The democracy, the threat is not only by this from the state, but also big business houses and the kind of monopoly of ownership of news that we are seeing, of television we are seeing, newspapers we are seeing, all of it and you are very much a part of that. You know, I agree with you, 40 years ago, 45 years ago, the government had a monopoly on the TV. There was only Durdhachan and nobody to compete with Durdhachan, nobody to compete with all India Radio. You recall that famous day in January 1977, when Jayaprakash Narayan had assembled leaders cutting across political lines in Ramli Lamaidan and to coincide with that event, they showed Bobby on Durdhachan. Now the point is, we are seeing a new kind of, what should I say, censorship happening. Look, in some ways it is not just equally dangerous but I would say more dangerous. Now insidious and far more effective because this is willing censorship by the media and by the owners of the media. Now you see what Pune Prasad and Vajpayee has written. He said two days prior to all this happening, this particular incident and one day after it, the BJP president had instructed people who work in the BJP's social media team in Ranchi and Patna not to spare Pune Prasad. Now when something like this comes from the BJP president who for all intents and purposes is the second most powerful person in the country, my God, it has a chilling effect. I happen to be the president of the foundation for media professionals and we issued a statement saying it is not only to intimidate these people. And look, when the BJP president says this in front of large numbers of people, it can't remain off the record. When he says it, it's passing a public message in parliament out. So you send out a message to everybody else and that is the chilling effect and that is what is really in my opinion extremely dangerous and a matter of great concern. Same as the Barkha Dat issue that we had discussed earlier in our studios where Barkha said that she is being attacked and sort of anybody willing to talk to her and give her space? Anybody willing to give her or to support her to run a television channel was being intimidated. And this is a continuation and the utterly prison manner in which they have done it is to me I am absolutely shocked and I think this is to be deplored and condemned in the strongest possible language. Now the other issue that I think is something to worry about. What has been the response of the media other houses? You have also various organizations that exist in the media. Apart from your organization, I think Editors Guild has also put out a statement. Yes, but Editors Guild did not name names. Editors Guild made few general statements which are absolutely unexceptionable. There are statements which says there have been attempts that are being made to stifle the dissenting voices. The foundation for media professionals, its statement we named everybody, we named all the names. Now journalists are notoriously, what should I say, fractious. They don't stick together. The unions, the associations, the guilds. We rarely sort of stand up for each other and that's unfortunate but true. But I am seeing that even if the mainstream, so-called mainstream media has ignored it, at least in the social media, the web portals are showing it. It's the same way I had somebody from Mumbai saying that look, none of the television channels were broadcasting live what Mr. Arun Shuri, Yashwant Sinha and Prashant Bhushan were saying. But I got to see it on the website. I mean there was a live broadcast happening in some of the portals. So I think after a while they can try very hard but we live in a different day and age and you can't stifle the voices. For some time, yes. In some places, yes. Not for all places. Absolutely. You are turning around that old adage that you can fool some people all the time, all the people, some of the time but not all the people all the time. So we are in that. But do you think this is also a good reason for the journalists to realize that the unions which have weakened and which never really came out of the print space into television space, it's time that the journalist starts unionizing and thinking about it. They have to stand with each other. They have to show solidarity with one another. Otherwise, you know, again, when you are being singled out, there will be nobody to stand with you. Again, that very well. Yes, first they came for the Jews, then they came from the unions, then they came from the communists. And when they came for you, there was nobody there left for you to support you. So I think it's about time we stood by our sisters and brothers in the profession and realized that an attack on them is an attack on you as well. And if you are intimidated and scared, they'll be emboldened to continue in this manner. Thank you very much, Paranjoy. Specifically to raise that the media freedom is a matter that everybody should be concerned with and the journalists have to be at the forefront of this struggle because this is really their struggle for the core of their profession. Their spirit, the soul of their profession. Thank you. Thank you, Praveer, for discussing this subject, which I believe is a very, very important subject in today's day and age. Yes. This is all the time we have today. Do keep watching, news click and visit our website.