Arnab Goswami on Thursday night threatened to sue media houses that carried adverse headlines against him in the TRP scam case. This was after Republic TV reported that former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh had reportedly told the Enforcement Directorate (ED) that Sachin Vaze was ‘taking briefing and giving instruction’ in the TRP case directly from the ex-Home Minister Anil Deshmukh. A visibly enraged Goswami also hit out his former Times Now colleague Navika Kumar by mocking her ‘walking into his shoes’ statement.
Referring Kumar as a ‘hoax anchor,’ Goswami said, “There’s hoax anchor, who thinks that she walks in my shoes. They are a blot to journalism.”
In her 8-minute monologue last year, the Times Now anchor had said, “Tonight ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know, I just want to begin on a personal note. I know it’s not my place to talk about personal things on a show when I am a journalist, a news person.”
Kumar had said that she learnt the craft of TV broadcasts from Goswami, so when the latter left the channel in 2016, she found it hard to step into his shoes.
Mocking Kumar, Goswami had said, “People say they found it difficult to walk in my shoes…I want to tell them I carried my shoes with me (when I left Times Now). So nobody is walking into my shoes. I carried my shoes with me and walked into Republic.”
Goswami had also told a court that his former Times Now colleague was jealous of his success.
On Thursday, Goswami also said that he was seriously considering suing media outlets carrying adverse headlines against him in the TRP scam case.
Goswami founded Republic TV with the help of BJP parliamentarian Rajeev Chandrasekhar in 2017. Immediately after its launch, his TV channel began to dominate the TV ratings thereby becoming the market leader in the English news genre.
However, he and his TV colleagues were drawn into what came to be known as the TRP Scam. In October 2020, the then Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh sensationally revealed that his force had busted a scam to manipulate TRPs by some TV channels including Republic TV. Singh had said that bank accounts of the three TV channels including that of Republic TV will come under scrutiny and seized if the allegations of fraud are established.
Mumbai Police later arrested several top-ranking Republic TV officials including Republic TV CEO Vikas Khanchandani.