How far and how successfully we’ve travelled is not for me to judge. One thing is for sure: it’s been a stormy, eventful and exciting passage which has seen at least one colossal blunder—the Gujarat poll where we predicted Modi’s defeat—and some minor ones. We’ve suffered at the hands of the BJP, notably Atal Behari Vajpayee and Brajesh Mishra, who organised income-tax raids against Outlook and then gave me lectures on how profoundly they believed in a free press. We have broken a few, actually quite a few stories.... At the risk of immodesty, it is not a bad record. In the last 30 years and more, only two new mainstream English publications have achieved both critical and commercial success. Besides Outlook and The Telegraph from Calcutta, there are no other contenders.
Presently, in a media scene cluttered by too many players fighting for a slice from a limited advertising cake, life is very difficult indeed. To bemoan the entry of round-the-clock news and current affairs television is like spitting into the wind. These guys set fresh professional rules by the day and merrily break them by night. For them, the most complex of political issues can be resolved by one anchor and three chairs. If you sit people around a table and encourage them to shout and scream, truth they believe will emerge. It never does. What emerges is noise.
I am reminded of what the great journalist Alistair Cooke told Jawaharlal Nehru. Cooke said as a reporter he had been taught that the truth has two sides and he should report both. What, he asked Panditji, was he to do since increasingly he found the truth had four, even five sides. "Ah," replied Nehru, "you’ve discovered the Hindu view of truth."