‘Eminent’ NDTV news anchor Sanket Upadhyay posted pictures of the channel’s newsroom on social media on Friday where it could be seen that Republic TV was playing on one of the television screens on the room. It has opened a can of worms as people across the political spectrum are perplexed as to why was NDTV, the epitome of ‘secular neutral journalism’, was watching Republic TV, which ‘secular neutral journalists’ do not even consider a media network.
The Newsroom. pic.twitter.com/fMKhmzITDr
— Sanket Upadhyay (@sanket) October 16, 2020
India Today’s Data Intelligence Unit has calculated that theoretically, the probability of NDTV watching Republic TV was 176.4% lesser than Rahul Kanwal developing a spine and Rajdeep Sardesai quitting boxing. However, 2020 has been that kind of a year. Reliable sources have also informed us that India Today has forbidden its employees from expressing personal opinions on social media because Aroon Purie does not want people to know that 87.8% of India Today employees have a photograph of Arnab Goswami on their personal desk.
AajTak, meanwhile, claims that Republic TV has paid NDTV 500 rupees to increase its TRP. Sanket Upadhyay has strongly denied such allegations. He claims that NDTV employees will never sell their integrity for that amount. The price is much higher. However, reliable sources, who do not wish to be named, confirmed that AajTak ‘s report is accurate. They told us that while NDTV was initially unwilling to accept the money but a call from their chief accountant at precisely that moment about the state of their finances convinced them to change their minds.
Bald Man of FaultNews was spotted dancing in the streets as he was convinced that NDTV will finally hire them for fact-checking the reports submitted by their own journalists before they are published and FaultNews will earn a hefty amount in the process. Bald Man was also desperate for the money as his colleague is facing charges of harassing little children. And, thus far, trends suggest that the colleague is not willing to stop anytime soon despite the rising costs.
We were reliably informed that Bald Man implored his colleague to explore fixing-punctures as a hobby as an alternative to harassing children online but his colleague took offence to it due to unstated cultural reasons. The Wire, on the other hand, is exploring ideas on how they can portray NDTV’s editorial choices as a consequence of Brahminical Patriarchy and oppression by Heteronormative Cis-Gender Savarna Fascism. Unable to strike a breakthrough, they have invited their friends at Scroll for a brainstorming session.
Arnab Goswami, meanwhile, is touting this as a success of Republic News Network and called Mumbai Police to inform that the news coverage of other channels is so poor that not even their employees watch it in their newsrooms. He used the pictures released by Sanket Upadhyay as evidence of his claim. The Republic TV Editor-in-Chief said, “Tak waale are so bad even their own employees would rather watch Republic TV!” Arnab Goswami was also heard boasting that more NDTV employees watch Republic than the total number of viewers NDTV attracts.
The actual reason for Sanket Upadhyay watching Republic TV during his working hours has been found to be far mundane. Top officials at NDTV informed us that the employees were instructed to watch the channel as a tutorial on how to run a news channel successfully. The instructions came after NDTV ‘journalists’ ended up with huge eggs on their faces after falsely claiming that a Tanishq showroom at Gujarat was attacked by a mob for its ad normalising Love Jihad.
Top officials at NDTV had to call up their anchors to inform them that if they had to issue multiple clarifications and offer numerous justifications to prove that there was an attack when nobody else could see it with their own eyes, then most probably, there had not been any attack and it was foolish of them to pretend otherwise. It was then that NDTV employees were instructed to watch Republic TV.
Sanket Upadhyay reportedly told his friends in private that the top bosses of NDTV have assured that all medical expenses that could be required to treat diseases of the heart and disorders of the ears due to excessive exposure to the high decibel coverage of Republic TV would be covered by the company itself.
Furthermore, the mystery behind Republic TV’s high TRP appears to have been solved. US President Donald Trump is apparently an ardent fan of Republic TV because of its ‘high energy’ coverage. “Republic is the secret of my energy!” Trump reportedly told ‘Low Energy’ Jeb Bush, informed Marco Rubio. John Bolton, too, confessed that he wanted to bomb Iran after he became too excited following an episode of Arnab Goswami’s debate.
This is a work of satire and should be taken with a pinch of salt.
