On Sunday, September 29, 2013 I woke up to the fact that yet another shady millionaire had woken up to the fact that the best way to spend your ill-gotten wealth is by starting a news channel. After all, if propaganda is what tickles you pink, you might as well fund it yourself.

Hindustan Times had reported that a news channel was being launched in Pakistan. It was called BOL. And one of the promoters was Axact which “has a reputation for hosting illegal porn sites and selling fake degrees, charges it denies”. But that’s not what HT had printed a half-page report on. The news wasn’t about an illegal porn provider dabbling in media enterprise, it was about the fact that the other backer was Dawood Ibrahim, whose right-hand man Chota Shakeel was sitting in on recruitment interviews for the channel. (You’ve got to appreciate Dawood’s hands-on approach.)

I must say though, that I’m quite disappointed that Dawood (and the other backer, ISI) has taken so long to jump on the media bandwagon. After all everybody’s not lucky enough to have a Pravda to sing your praises to the world. And with the mess our journalists get into nowadays, you know no self-respecting viewer is willing to take them seriously. They’re so busy becoming the news themselves, that you can’t really depend on them to put forward your point of view. The cleverer thing to do – if you have the big bucks of course – is to set up a news channel or newspaper yourself. And Dawood’s done just that – set up BOL, which will start a news and an entertainment channel first and then move into setting up an English newspaper.

Dawood’s not the first infamous mover on the media entrepreneurship block though. Or the first to realise the power of the media and the loyalty you can buy when you pay the salaries of the people who are to represent you in the right light. And before you go dissing the love for media manipulation by dictators and despots, think twice.

Most detractors of propaganda channels and films don’t realise that if it wasn’t for Hitler’s cultivation of Leni Reifenstahl, Karan Johar would have never had the low angle shot which he’s famously used to shoot Shah Rukh Khan in all his films. It was in Triumph Of The Will – which documented Hitler’s visit to Nuremberg to attend the Nazi Party Congress – that Reifenstahl first used the low angle shot to shoot Hitler. Making him seem larger than life.  Looming over the lens. Not to mention her use of never-before seen camera angles, and cameramen who shot footage while they rolled around on skates. Hindi cinema has an immense debt of gratitude to Reifenstahl.  Vijay Mallya would have done well to have watched the film before making the Kingfisher intro video.

And no, I’m not going to mention Modi in the same breath as Hitler. Not yet. Another lover of the media, is someone more contemporary and slightly more smarmy – Berlusconi, lover of the good life. Silvio Berlusconi, ex-prime minister of Italy and one of its more famous convicts, is also one of Italy’s richest men and a media mogul, who has put his money to good use. He might have started his career as a nightclub crooner and vacuum cleaner salesman, but he soon moved onto launching a cable television company – Telemilano. Which then became Italy’s largest media company, Mediaset owning three of the country’s largest private TV channels. He also owns Italy’s largest publishing house, Mondadori and a daily newspaper, Il Giornale. And because he’s a man’s man, he also owns AC Milan football club.

And since hum kisi se kum nahin, to match Italy’s Berlusconi we have quite a handful of politicians dabbling in the media ourselves. There’s the Kalanithi Maran-owned Sun Group of channels and newspapers. Which act as quite the effective mouthpiece for Karunanidhi. As they should. No point pumping in crores of rupees into a media house if it’s not going to blow your trumpet for you.

Of course, there’s Mamata-di who loves all things celluloid-related, if you go by her sudden joie de vivre whenever in the company of Bengal’s actors and actresses. And King Khan. And all of them fall in line with her, agreeing to dance like performing monkeys at various events she hosts. But Didi is not one to set her sights low. She launched Ma Maati Manush TV – a very swanky looking website which integrates video, radio and print. All under the aegis of the curly haired communications wonder, Derek O’Brien. Since the media is always being unkind to Didi, and since she’s never been the humble self-effacing sort, she announced last year that she will also launch a government-run television channel and a newspaper, named Paschim Banga and Dainik Paschim Banga. With her own Hitlerian honesty, she said that the two would “disseminate ‘correct information’ and ‘publicise the activities and achievements of the government…Government work is not being properly highlighted. We need our own news channel and newspaper to inform the people’”.

Then there’s of course NaMo TV – the channel which was set up by Gujarat’s BJP unit in collaboration with five local Gujarati satellite channels. It is aired by all cable networks, direct-to-home (DTH) and digital channels. While all you get on this channel is Modi and only Narendra Modi, sadly the programmes are not shot by Reifenstahl – you can take a look at the wonderful programmes on the NaMo TV live stream.

And just in case you feel that Modi should really not be compared to Dawood, I agree. He shouldn’t. But we can compare Dawood to Jessica Lal’s murderer Manu Sharma. Whose family, while he’s in jail, has bought News X and Sunday Guardian. The news channel and newspaper are run by Manu Sharma’s brother, Karthikeya Sharma. He is quite the media mogul – almost a role model for Dawood. Kartikeya owns the Haryana newspaper – Aaj Samaj, the Hindi magazine – India News,  and India News Haryana, India News Bihar & Jharkhand, India News Rajasthan, India News UP & UK and India News MP & Chattisgarh. Maybe this is all a result of Manu Sharma skipping parole to shake a leg at a pub in Chandigarh. If only they’d owned NewsX and Sunday Guardian back then, at least there would have been a possibility that someone would have reported something favourable about the murderous Sharma parole-skipping ways.

So why weigh into Dawood? A pilloried man’s got to do what a pilloried man’s got to do. Otherwise the only good propaganda he’ll get is when Rishi Kapoor plays him in a film. And that too not very flatteringly. Also, give Dawood credit that he’s trying to give back something to the State which has looked after him for so long. The turncoats, Geo TV, no longer sing the praises of Pakistan and are known to have metamorphosed into quite the anti-establishment channel. So Dawood is only doing his bit for god and country. Literally. Because the best and only way to combat Geo TV, is to help ISI set up a pro-establishment channel. And since, Dawood seems to know that to have a good media product one must learn from the best – in this case, Mamata and Hitler – Dawood’s hired a professional to put the show together for him. While he might not be Leni Reifenstahl, Dawood’s hired the ex-head of Geo TV to head BOL.

With the way media houses are downsizing and journalists are losing their jobs, I think we shouldn’t grudge Dawood his media musings. He’s supposedly got more than 40,000 applications to the channel. So anyone looking for a fat pay packet and a change of scenery, know where they can apply now. And you’ll get to be interviewed by Chota Shakeel. It doesn’t get better than this.

I’d say that we should start expecting a film called Islamabad. In which the camera will zoom in to strident music. From a low angle we’ll see a short man standing tall. Wearing dark glasses, with a slightly longer than usual handlebar moustache. The camera will slowly swoop upwards. Suddenly the man will seem larger than life. And from here will be born the triumph of Dawood’s will and the birth of the next set of Karan Johar’s new photography techniques.