The editor and some innocuous gossip

January 26, 2015 10:09 pm | Updated 10:09 pm IST

EDITOR UNPLUGGED — Media, Magnates, Netas & Me: Vinod Mehta; Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 7th Floor, Infinity Tower-C, DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon-122002. Rs. 599.

EDITOR UNPLUGGED — Media, Magnates, Netas & Me: Vinod Mehta; Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 7th Floor, Infinity Tower-C, DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon-122002. Rs. 599.

Picking up an (auto)biography reflects the desire of a reader for an intimate relationship with the author. An entire publishing industry thrives around the desire of readers to seek the life-story of that personality. As if, in the writer’s habits and passions, the reader may find a hidden truth that gives meaning to all of that author’s achievements. But poof! this is a mere trick. The philosopher Rolland Barthes has done much to shatter this “illusory, narcissistic relationship between reader and writing by claiming that the author is just another fiction that has been invented by a capitalist society that wants to attribute ownership to all commodities, literary texts among them.” What is the relevance of this digression for this review? Because it is with this desire of seeking some intimate truth about our dearest media, business and the netas of India, through Mr. Mehta eyes, that I too opened Editor Unplugged . Not finding this truth is of course not the failing of author, but I am merely trying to suggest that in reading any autobiography, be it this one or any other, the desire is bound to be left unfulfilled.

Having given up those higher expectations from an autobiography, (Mr. Mehta refers to his book as an autobiography in the Acknowledgements) one can then read the book for some gossip and ghup-shup. The book does decently well in this respect. The style is conversational and chit-chatty rather than immersive or intense. Unlike Lucknow Boy, which was a lot more personal, Editor Unplugged is more of a collection of his thoughts, perspectives and opinions on various public issues, interspersed with anecdotes and personal references. This is a 280 page book, neatly structured into 14 parts, carrying a couple of black-and-white photographs of Mr. Mehta chatting with Arnab Goswami; smoking a cigar and cracking a joke with Sushma Swaraj; bantering with Rajdeep Sardesai; lighting candles at Wagah with Pakistani friends; posing with his dog Editor.

Vinod Mehta describes himself as a secular-lefty, closer to the jholawala gang of Amartya Sen than the Davos gang of Jagdish Bhagwati. He is a “liberal, upper-middle-class type”, with a lifestyle represented by the passage from gulping Hercules XXX rum in the 1970’s to sipping Scotch now, via a long period of Indian whisky. His experience in the news industry gives him a perspective that can be insightful at times. For a lay reader, there are three general and broad aspects to look out for in the book: first, his portraits of key political figures such as Arvind Kejriwal, “a media creation in every sense”, the ‘chameleon-like’ Modi’s “well-oiled mean machine, fuelled by money-power, managerial power, RSS-power and people’s power”; his thoughts on the Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty (flagging its “Mummy has to be helped” principle), the Tata’s, Ruskin Bond, Arundhati Roy, Sachin Tendulkar and so on; Second, his thoughts on the corporatisation of Indian news media; and Third, to get some sense of the internal workings, behind the scene politics, roles and responsibilities of editors and journalists in the media business. The celebrity readers will be content focusing on parts where he refers to them anyway.

Largely, Mr. Mehta sounds like a modest and a humble guy, except when he talks about the Radia tapes affair. But then, maybe he deserves to be proud about it. One senses his pride, though he tries to hide it, when referring to how Outlook’s Radia tape leaks silenced the ever-moralising Tata’s, who have since then stopped any engagement with Outlook, and on one occasion even frowned upon Mehta when he dined at the Taj. Vinod Mehta strongly argues the case for salvaging the centrality of the editor in Indian news media, and repeatedly criticises Samir Jain’s Times of India model of ‘editorial subservience to marketing’. Elsewhere, he launches a spirited defence of gossip as the start of a story, its potential in a democracy and ultimately expresses regret about how much gossip may come his way now that he has retired. At times Mr. Mehta is an all out romantic. He gets nostalgic about linotype printers during his Debonair days in the 1970’s; he calls the narcissistic editors of the 60s, 70s and 80s, the ‘golden age’; and takes pride in his discomfort with social media. But he also snaps out of this romanticism and becomes a pragmatist. For instance, when discussing the corporatisation of Indian media, he romanticises the “public trust” model of doing business, be it the Economic & Political Weekly , or the Scott Trust that runs The Guardian. But then he snaps out of it, realises the lacking financial viability of a trusteeship, and instead, settles for a corporate-owned media that ensures prevention of oligarchies and cartels, and encourages pluralism in the industry.

To conclude, the book makes for a quick and breezy read, in parts insightful and peppered with some innocuous gossip. However, being marketed in the autobiography genre, the book lacks an intimacy, or a peep into the deeper psychological pathways of the storyteller.

Editor Unplugged — Media, Magnates, Netas & Me: Vinod Mehta; Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 7th Floor, Infinity Tower-C, DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon-122002. Rs. 599.

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