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| Ramalinga Raju |
I only ever met Ramalinga Raju once. Nearly ten years ago I interviewed Narayan Murthy for a TV Show I used to do called Star Talk. At that time Murthy was not the icon he is now but because I have friends who work at Infosys, I knew I bit about him and insisted on interviewing him. As I had predicted, Murthy was great on TV, telling many of the stories that we now know so well (his conversion from communism etc.) for the first time.
The success of the Murthy interview prompted the channel (Star) to ask me to find other undiscovered business heroes. I replied that I did not know very many of them (though I am proud to have done one of the earliest full-length interviews with Sunil Mittal), so could they suggest some instead?
My producer at the time came up with Raju, a man I had never heard of. His is an amazing success story, she said. He will be as big as Murthy. You must interview him.
And so I did. Because most of my audience had never heard of him, I did my best to play up his achievements upfront, including how his share price had soared etc. But the interview was a dismal failure because Raju was clearly not meant for TV.
On paper, his achievements may have seemed striking. But on TV, he came across as a shifty little man with no charisma, no flair and no ability to talk coherently about his success. When the shoot was over, I berated my producer for the choice of guest and swore never to trust her judgement again.
But, as the years went on, I began to feel that she had been right and I had been wrong. Raju went from glory to glory. He was feted by international bodies, won awards for corporate governance and Satyam, his company, became a pin-up in the business press.
I refused to interview him, however, three years ago, when we launched the Bombay edition of the HT and I did a series of long interviews with business leaders. Many people suggested Raju. But I would not touch him. "He is shifty little shyster" I said, while business journalists looked incredulous.
Now, of course, I've had the last laugh. It turns out that my gut instinct was more on the ball than the well-researched articles that business journalists wrote about Satyam's many achievements and Raju's genius.
On the whole, I've found that gut feel often works better in journalism than research. For instance, I came away from meeting Harshad Mehta thinking he was a total con man even though the media, in the early Nineties, were busy glorifying him. I thought that Dhirubhai Ambani had flair and vision at a time (in the Eighties) when the media were calling Reliance a bubble and predicting Dhirubhai's downfall.
| "But at least it proves one thing. When journos get it wrong, we even get media stories wrong!" |
When I profile a businessman I tend to ignore the price-earning ratios etc. and focus on the man himself. This makes for a more interesting interview (I think) but naturally, my conclusions can be superficial, instinctive and not backed by any research.
Business journalists, on the other hand, must back everything up with figures, must analyse balance sheets and include hard evidence. In theory, this should yield conclusions that are less flakey than mine and will stand the test of time.
Except that I am not sure it ever works that way. The defining characteristic of nearly every business scam over the last three decades has been the business press's inability to spot the scamster till it is too late. Invariably, the crook is glorified, credulous investors are encouraged to invest in his company and then, when it all comes crashing down, the journos take the opposite position, distance themselves from the man they had praised and pursue him with a terrifying intensity.
In this respect at least, business journalism is different from political journalism. When you read about Mayawati's corruption or about Amar Singh's role in the cash-for-vote scam, are you ever surprised? We may goof up sometimes but on the whole, political journos have already identified the crooks and dodgy characters even before the scams surface.
Perhaps business journalists are not allowed to be as scathing. I really don't know. My one brush with business journalism came last year when I left News X, a TV channel I had been briefly involved with.
This gave me a chance to see the workings of the media from the other side. Some conclusions: trade publications decide coverage on the basis of advertising. Or they are just incompetent. The single most unprofessional story appeared (or was planted) in something called Campaign India, which I had never heard of. Ditto with some web-sites. Indian Television.com carried stories without bothering to look for attribution, sourcing or comment. Best of the lot was Exchange4Media where every story was accurate, well-researched and fair.
In print, the best was Business Standard where the irresponsibility of junior reporters was over-ruled by experienced senior journalists who double-checked every story and carried only the facts.
Easily the worst was Mint ---- ironic because I am a columnist ---- which managed to get basic details wrong, running biased and inaccurate reports and then following them up with a series of wildly speculative (always attributed to "a source close to the situation") stories which (long after I had left and other NewsX issues were being featured) nearly always demonstrated a total misunderstanding of the situation.
As Mint is not a newspaper that carries much news and specializes in thoughtful, analytical reports, these lapses were surprising. One theory is that the paper likes running Stardust-type media-gossip stores which are either of no consequence (the Delhi Press Club elections ) or just wrong (Pradeep Guha to join Big TV), in the hope that people will talk about them. When NewX was eventually sold, Mint which had identified the wrong suitors, failed again as Exchange4Media scooped the story.
But at least it proves one thing. When journos get it wrong, we even get media stories wrong!
(Note: This article was originally written for my Pursuits column in Lounge. But the editor of Mint refused to carry it because it included criticism of his paper.)
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(Picture courtesy Hindustan Times)