Indiantelevision.com's Seema Pherwani spoke to India TV editor-in-chief Rajat Sharma, in the eye of a controversy following the series of 'sting operations' his channel has conducted that has already accounted for two scalps in Bollywood baddie Shakti Kapoor and television superstar Aman Verma.
Though difficult to pin down, the man who is known to have put many in the hot seat maintains that the exercise was not a ploy to garner eyeballs and reveals that there is lots more of the same in the pipeline.
Why and how was this whole operation planned? |
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The way the sting operation has been conducted has been criticised across the media. Many say it was a real trap and its all about invading someone's privacy. |
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But surely there are other ways of exposing issues? |
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But why blow up an issue like the casting couch? Aren't there are other important issues around us? Because it affects millions of aspiring youngsters who came to Mumbai with stars in their eyes. They fall prey to people in the industry who promise them roles at the cost of being exploited. So, they need to know the reality. The response has been overwhelming. I've received more 74,000 sms from parents, 22,000 emails and more than 1 lakh (100,000) people responded through the DTH service. |
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But what message are we conveying to the parents of women journalists? How far can a woman go out to get a story? Things could have gone out of hand. |
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That doesn't answer my question, how far can we go to get a scoop? The reporter did not reveal her identity. |
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Isn't it just a marketing gimmick to garner eyeballs and get viewer recall? |
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People say you've used wine and women to make Shakti Kapoor blabber. |
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But why trap someone like Shakti Kapoor, who's not even a producer? |
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But now people will be scared of talking to India TV? We are not here to scare anyone. |
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Critics say the Tehelka sting operation was justified as it was all about exposing corruption at the higher levels. Tehelka was a website and later used another channel to air the operation. So, there is no comparison between the two cases. |
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India TV is in for a long haul as Shakti Kapoor plans to sue you. He can go ahead and sue us. In any case he doesn't have too much of a strong case. If we show the entire tape it will only embarrass him further. |