Barkha Dutt was sold down the river by NDTV. If this was the slave era, Prannoy Roy would have got a good price for the wench. He still won. What he did get for his coldblooded murder of the Dutt icon was a one hour self indulgent exercise in marketing his channel as a citadel of virtue and Dutt be damned. Take her away, she’s damaged goods. For graceless TV mediated by a dreary Editor lady that no one paid any attention to this was tough to beat. If Barkha did not realize her bosses served her up for supper on a show that pandered so crudely to the concept of ‘honest’ journalism I am surprised.

What was the deal? What was the threat? What feverish armtwisting went on before Barkha Dutt surrendered. Get on that show or lose your job? That’s probable. Why else would the channel conduct this gratuitous exercise unless some genius decided, look let’s make money out of her misery. They even sponsored the show. 

Any reasonably self-respecting member of the fourth estate watching this nonsense would have flung his plough away in disgust and taken up banking. We have all suffered on the tip of the spike and spiked our juniors in return.

Consequently, it was like we were witnessing a purge or a cleansing more befitting Henry II for Thomas Beckett, not the meaningless drivel of a complete non-issue in the cosmic sense.  The four media clowns who interrogated Barkha Dutt wore robes spun from piety and were so fey and cute that they made you laugh with their sermons and soda water approach to eviscerating their target while pretending to lofty heights of probity. Get out of here. The top tier of Indian journalists are poncy little self appointed celebs who love to play lobbyist and be seen by the right people in the right places. They largely feed at the trough of affluence or trot tamely down the corridors of power seeking scraps. They want to be on Page 3, they are insufferable in their cocoons of power balanced only by the 24/7 asskissing they engage in with their proprieters (now, that’s a show, Prannoy) so they can save their mangy little jobs and these four made one sick to the stomach. You would think we were monks in the media the way they were spraying their aerosol values. Come on, guys, wake up, none of you, of course, have ever cancelled a story on orders from upstairs, dumped another because Marketing dicked you over, taken a freebie flight or vacation, made a little extra on the side or even reworked staff copy because the way it was going in it would have offended a friend. Damn it, you would never spike a story because… because… because. Seeing as how at least one of these four was allegedly drummed out of a job under a rather shady tenure abroad following a whistle-blowing from one of his own staff, the sanctimony rang so patently false that I felt sorry for Barkha Dutt being crucified with holier than thou claptrap.

I don’t particularly like the woman, not that she cares. I think she is shrill, obnoxious, bloated with self-importance, arrogant and opinionated to a fault but that still gave NDTV no right to set her up for sacrifice in this fashion. That is bad form and unethical.

I cannot believe she willingly went on that show. I think the stink in the aftermath came from three points:

The compere lady whatshername who killed the show with her lack of erudition and her spiel about the interrogation being unedited. Gee, no, really, wow, that’s awesome, you great temple of journalism.

The idiocy of Barkha Dutt in agreeing to do this show which was a circus designed to slake a media thirst for blood since 99 per cent of them would love to have had the power and profile of a Dutt but are handicapped by their mediocrity. I am sure she was browbeaten into submission, there was no call for her to clear her name, no reason at all.

The panchayat type ugliness of the prejudice on display by the panel and the tedious replaying of boring tapes made for dull watching and there was no conclusion, just babble.

And one more factor. That Dutt tangled herself in a web of confusion by taking the sackcloth and ashes route and apologising. Never do that. No one remembers why you apologised…they only remember that you did. Bad move, Barkha, you were indicted not by the peers but by yourself. You should have told the world to go to hell in a basket and walked tall.

You know why Vinod Mehta never came to the party? He was smart enough not to be the fifth clown.