A few days ago news had broken that NDTV, in some form of a ‘restructuring process’ had decided to lay off 25% of its workforce in the near future. NDTV has claimed that such a decision was in line with the group’s “turnaround plan”, to bring down costs. This was revealed via a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.
This layoff comes within 6 months of a report which claimed that the failing channel had fired 70 staffers. The report claimed that while the editorial staff said that the TV channel was shifting to MoJo (Mobile Journalism), other sources told the media house that the company was facing some ‘financial stress’.
Considering, that a sizable chunk of journalists may be rendered jobless, the Press Club of India has pulled up NDTV via a letter, as per a tweet by senior journalist Barkha Dutt:
As seen above, the letter sent to NDTV’s chairperson Prannoy Roy, by the Press Club president Gautam Lahiri, mentions the massive reduction and layoffs which the channel is planning.
It reminded Prannoy Roy about how the Press Club has played a ‘lead role’ in organising protests against supposed government curbs on NDTV. It then asserted that the journalistic community was concerned about the ‘restructuring plan’ of the organisation.
Thus it invited Roy to the press club to address a meet, and make NDTV’s stance clear so that journalists can understand the logic and reason behind any such large scale retrenchment.
It remains to be seen if the Press Club will organise some form of a protest meet against NDTV itself, if Roy fails to address them in the near future.
It might also not be a coincidence that this statement by the PTI was shared by Barkha, as it is amply clear that she has spared no opportunity to try and target her former employers.
We had reported in the past how she had time and tried to expose the misdeeds in NDTV, which includes writing a long Facebook post, to exposes censorship at NDTV. She also spilled the beans on how former corporate lobbyist Nira Radia had helped the channel financially and had also launched other attacks on the channel.
Apart from the channel, she also doesn’t seem to be seeing eye to eye with her former colleagues and it was documented how she and Nidhi Razdan had a fight on twitter.
