Opinion Conflict of Disinterest

The report flashed half a dozen important people apparently taped on those occasions on screen. Well,with one notable exception. NDTV’s group editor Barkha Dutt did not deserve to be singled out and hounded the way she was after the tapes came out — but can you really do a story about the controversy that flashes pictures of Tarun Das of CII instead of Dutt? That the channel covering the controversy has an interest in protecting its leading asset should at least be mentioned at some point,shouldn’t it?

Wait,you say. That whole story happened last year; TV’s institutional memory barely stretches three weeks; why are they doing the story? Well,one of those recorded,former Hindustan Times editorial director Vir Sanghvi,sent the tapes off to various well-known laboratories in the US and England; the labs reported that the tapes had been tampered with,and in one case Sanghvi’s voice had been altered.

A news source that thinks this is an important story has only one alternative,of course. Ah,yes,you say,in all your charming naïveté,you mean they will now certainly invest in independently-commissioned verification of these shocking results,which undermine the big story of last year? No. They will have four people in pea-sized boxes on to talk about it.

Thus it was that Singh introduced Sanghvi,Prashant Bhushan,and lawyer Gopal Jain. Bhushan was not there because of the one-Team-Anna-member-a-night rule. Apparently,the allegations Bhushan had faced over similar tapes/transcripts earlier this year — a Chandigarh-based forensics lab eventually said the tapes in question were faked — apparently pushed Sanghvi into acting. And he served a crucial additional purpose for news discussions: as designated doubter of Sanghvi’s claims.

Of course,he had absolutely nothing on which to base that doubt,since he had no technical analyses of the recordings to cite; but a close analysis of Bhushan’s career indicates that such minor constraints hardly slow him down. And he wasn’t a disinterested participant,either: the tapes are in the Supreme Court as an annexure to a case he’s fighting. And since one lawyer is never enough,we had to have Gopal Jain as well — the brother,incidentally,of NDTV anchor Srinivasan Jain,making it all nice and family-family.

Bhushan was happy to go on the offensive. His tapes were faked,he said smugly. But Vir Sanghvi’s were certainly not. How could he tell? I was half hoping he would say “I am a lawyer,in this country we make all the decisions,” but he actually wound up saying “all the conversations are in perfect context,you can recognise all the voices.” I fully look forward to a PIL to close all audio analysis labs that don’t follow the stringent Bhushan Method of authentication.

Sanghvi,who had probably decided in advance not to lose his temper,made the novel accusation that Prashant Bhushan was indulging in a bit of a double standard. He added that we should moderate how much we believe tapes,stings,and leaks. As had happened with Bhushan,he said: “We still believe in his integrity,though we doubt his intelligence.”

Now,now,said Singh. This was not about Vir vs Prashant,this was about the larger issue of trust. (The flashing text to her left read “Vir CD vs Bhushan CD”.) Gopal Jain agreed: we needed a new organisation that we could trust to authenticate tapes. It was implied,“my lab is better than yours.”

Except,of course,that nobody but Sanghvi had sent the tapes off to be analysed. A bit of a hole in the discussion,as it turned out. A hole that should have been filled by people from Open or Outlook magazine,one would think,defending their decision — increasingly dicey in retrospect — to publish without provenance,or the slightest effort at authentication. Singh said that the editors in question,Manu Joseph and Vinod Mehta,“had refused to come on the shows.” They’re just lucky it isn’t Times Now,where that non-appearance would count as an admission of guilt.

mihir.sharma@expressindia.com