‘Eminent journalist’ Ravish Kumar has called fellow ’eminent journalist’ Rajdeep Sardesai a dukaandaar (shopkeeper) and a balancer. He made the comment during an interview to Sandeep Chaudhary of News24 at the Isomes Manthan. Ravish Kumar called Rajdeep Sardesai a shopkeeper in response to a question from Manak Gupta, the executive editor of News24.
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Manak Gupta asked Ravish Kumar, “Aren’t you too negative? For instance, Rajdeep had come yesterday…”. Even before Manak Gupta could complete his question, Ravish Kumar interrupted him and said, “Manak, I am not a shopkeeper.” He continued, “The person you have mentioned, I am not a balance-vadi. It is a fact that the media is organizing the murder of democracy. This is not a matter of Sakaratmak or Nakaratmak…”.
“If you don’t call a murder a murder, what else would you call it?” He asked.
When Manak said that not only Rajdeep, but many other journalists also feel that for the split of media into two sections, both sides are responsible, Ravish disagreed with him. He said, “this is completely wrong, there is no balance. If 90% of media becomes one side then one should not run this shop that people from both sides have separated”.
Ravish accused Rajdeep Sardesai, and most of the media, of trying to do ‘balancing’ when there is none.
It may be noted that both Ravish Kumar and Rajdeep Sardesai were once colleagues at NDTV. While Ravish remained in NDTV, currently heading its Hindi channel, Rajdeep had moved on to CNN-IBN, and later joined the India Today channel. Rajdeep Sardesai was the Managing Editor of both NDTV 24X7 and NDTV India, means Ravish Kumar had worked under him at that time.
The NDTV journalist has not been having a good time lately. He was mocked by people on social media after the Delhi Police arrested the Delhi shooter Mohammed Shahrukh who Ravish Kumar claimed could have been one ‘Anurag Mishra’ in his show.
Days after ‘journalist’ Ravish Kumar spread misinformation stating that the February 24 shooter who fired at Delhi Police personnel was not Mohammad Shahrukh but a Hindu man named ‘Anurag Mishra’, the victim of the Ravish’s fake campaign – Anurag Mishra started receiving a lot of threats online.