Did NDTV's Nidhi Razdan do the right thing by telling the BJP's Sambit Patra to "apologise or leave my show" after he accused the channel of having an "agenda" and "spreading misinformation"? The Quint’s newsroom debates the incident. Here are the two main arguments which were presented.
For: ‘Why Should Sambit Patra Be Allowed to be a Disruptive Panelist?’
In the panel discussion on NDTV, you can see that Sambit Patra is repeatedly interrupting other panelists while Nidhi Razdan is saying that she will come to him for a comment. At one point, one panelist asks why does Patra keep interrupting him to which he says,
I interrupt other people in NDTV only, and I do that because NDTV has an agenda which needs to be exposed.
Until this point, Razdan has been patiently coming to him and asking him to wait while the other panelists make their point.
My point being, he is a disruptive panelist and instead of answering objective questions put to him, he is making irrelevant points. Why else do we have moderators if not to keep the panelists to the point of discussion?
Why should Patra’s repeated accusations, which don’t add anything to the debate, be allowed to drown out other panelists’ arguments?
Also, note that even when she was asking him to apologise, Patra kept saying, "I will stay till the end to expose the channel!" If you want to expose a news channel, do it by all means, but on your own airtime!
Additionally, this brings me to a larger point: Should panelists be allowed to cast aspersions on the agenda of the channel for which they are invited on a discussion on another issue?
If this was a discussion on media ownership, let Sambit Patra call NDTV a channel with an agenda by all means. But disruptions in a discussion where you are using accusations of being a ‘channel with agenda’ as an evasive tactic needs to be called out by the moderator. Which is what Razdan did.
The freedom to say what you want, for instance, in a separate 5-minute segment is different from a discussion where there are other voices which need to be heard as well.
Against: ‘What’s Different About NDTV?’
I don't agree with NDTV’s Nidhi Razdan's handling of the issue.
Imagine if this were Republic TV and a Congress spokesperson was saying that Arnab and Republic TV are biased against the Congress. If Goswami then proceeded to chuck the Congress spokesperson out of the show for saying that (all the while saying, "either apologise or leave the show"), we would have gone hammer and tongs at Arnab for not being able to take criticism on his channel.
What's different about NDTV then?
If Sambit Patra thinks that NDTV has an agenda against the BJP, he (and the BJP) should not be denied the right to say so on the channel. NDTV can, by all means, counter Patra's claims, but Patra should not be denied the expression of his opinion.
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