What has Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami actually done? According to social media site Twitter on Wednesday – almost every thing.
It all started with a tweet on Wednesday from Rajdeep Sardesai, his former colleague and consulting editor with India Today’s television station, where he criticised Goswami for allegedly claiming during an address that his car with crew was attacked by men armed with trishuls, seemingly during the Gujarat riots in 2002.
Sardesai, who was Goswami’s boss at NDTV at the time, refuted this. He said that Arnab Goswami wasn’t even covering Ahmedabad riots. In further tweets, Sardesai said that “fekugiri has its limits” and that he felt “sorry for his profession”. Meanwhile, journalists who were actually covering Gujarat riots backed Sardesai’s contention.
If this wasn’t enough, other journalists also jumped in the controversy with Rahul Kanwal, Managing Editor, India Today tweeting that he would do a show on Wednesday on his channel to find out if Arnab Goswami is a “big liar.”
Meanwhile, Twitter users jumped in and found ways to troll Goswami for his yet unproven assertions by coining the hashtag #ArnabDidIt and giving him credit for everything from the first moon landing to India’s 1857 sepoy mutiny. Photoshopped memes and pictures then flowed freely across the platform.