How to Say Nothing in 170 Words Courtesy Aroon Purie
A sweetly worded letter that requested an end to hatred on television gets a predictable non-response.
I know I should be grateful for anyone who speaks up in a country where speaking up has been criminalised but when Vasant Valley School Alumni decided to log their protest about “many within the India Today ecosystem” who were “regrettably undermining” values that they had supposedly learned at the school run by the same group and complained against the hate emanating from the media group’s television channel, I rolled my eyes at the careful wording of their letter.
I’m guessing that to convince the nearly 200 or so people to sign the letter, its writers had to make serious concessions, keep its tone ‘neutral’ and shower praises about the history of this media group and all the nice reporters it still employs—before they got to the point.
The alumni wrote that Vasant Valley nurtured values of inclusivity, empathy and responsibility. They asked that these values find their way back to the India Today newsroom.
As far as I know Indian elite schools have never been known to champion the above values. They have always been cesspits of exclusion, casteism and Islamophobia. Yes, even back in the Golden Era when I went to school.
But aside from this, the main mistake the letter writers made, in addition to their overly respectful tone, was the fact that they helpfully provided Aroon Purie a way out in their letter.
“You don’t owe us any answers, nor are we writing this to demand an explanation,” the alumni wrote to Purie.
AP, as his reporters and editors call him in the newsroom, took this to heart and replied after 19 days with a less than 200 word non-response that sounds like it was written by someone who quit law and became a brand manager at the India Today group.
Purie duly noted and thanked them for the feedback for around 134 words, attributing whatever you see on India Today’s TV channels to “democracy”.
And then he essentially indicated that he couldn’t be bothered by them because millions of people were watching what his channel does. “The ultimate arbiter of our work is our 500 million viewers and followers,” he said.
So much for expecting Purie to “clamp down on the hatred emanating from your airwaves and hold accountable those that openly engage in communal polarisation under the garb of news reportage”.
Personally I believe Vasant Valley’s alumni could have utilised their influence and elite education better by making a list of all those brands that advertise on what Newslaundry aptly refers to as ‘Bloodlust TV’ (a section that routinely features the hateful anchor Sudhir Chaudhary, a star employee of Aroon Purie) and then written all of them a letter holding them accountable for funding hate.
All of us can also pray that some day the Indian audience that Purie is using as an excuse to perpetuate this agenda, has enough of hate-filled television.
Read more on Chaudhary’s hateful histrionics here:
https://www.newslaundry.com/topic/sudhir-chaudhary
Meanwhile I can tell you that if any of his reporters had handed in Purie’s vapid response to him in the days when I was a journalist at India Today magazine, he would have replied: Throw it out of the window. Not worth the dustbin.” Most Indian television news too deserves the same treatment.
IF you haven’t followed this story, here’s a report on the original letter and here is a link to Purie’s response. Enjoy :)