The biggest brand this election season – and this, anyone who’s not been living in a cave would agree – is Narendra Modi. Modi sells and no one knows it better than the media. He’s suddenly omnipresent. Other than when it comes to the world of news. Media houses can speak of him, but they just can’t speak to him. Which is why NewsX  (and its sister Hindi news channel, India News) must have thought that they’d catch every eyeball in the country when they announced that they had landed the “biggest interview of the decade” with Narendra Modi.

It seemed NewsX  had pulled off a coup. They’d landed an interview with Modi. Not just one stand-alone interview – this was going to be a six-part series. The first episode of the interview, titled Decoding Modi and Modi – Ek Khoj in English and Hindi respectively, was aired at 9 pm on Saturday, March 29 amidst much anticipation. These were the slugs and tickers which played on screen during the telecast. “First and Exclusive”. “Modi breaks his silence.” “Insights Modi Never Shared Before.” You wouldn’t be mistaken in thinking that the interview was a recent one, since not once was it mentioned or written when this footage was shot.

The “interview” was actually shot sometime in June 2013 in six sessions over 9 hours by the editor of Manushi, Madhu Kishwar during her “fact-finding expedition” at Gujarat. Just in case you don’t know who Madhu Kishwar is, here’s a little primer for you. Madhu Kishwar is a journalist and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, but is known more famously for her book on Modi called Modinama and for her active support and defence of Modi on Twitter.

Maybe, just maybe, NewsX  could have mentioned to its viewers that this was archival footage or that it was shot almost an entire year ago. This didn’t slip by everyone, though. A mini storm of hashtags ensued in Twitterland – many questioned the format and made jibes at the format of the “interview”..

NewsX  was unperturbed by these naysayers and the show went on. The second and third episodes followed on the next two evenings. On April 1, barely 12 hours before the fourth episode was to go air, things took an ugly turn.  Madhu Kishwar tweeted this.

So the show was off? Wrong. Because right after her tweet, this is what Jehangir Pocha, Editor-in-Chief of  NewsX, tweeted.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, hell hath no fury as Madhu Kishwar scorned – as the NewsX team found out. At the receiving end this time was NewsX’s  Executive Editor, Kartikeyan Sharma, India News’ Managing Editor, Yashwant Rana and Monu Nalapat who’s a columnist with Sunday Guardian (a weekly newspaper owned by the NewsX group).

Kishwar’s tweets – which expressed a wide array of emotions from shock and grief to anger and retribution – accused NewsX  and India News of stealing her footage and then “throwing” her out of the program. NewsX  maintained a stoic silence other than for the following tweet.

NewsX  then tweeted when the next episode would be aired.

So what went wrong? Since the first tenet of journalism (yes, we still follow old-fashioned stuff like that) requires one to hear both sides of the story, we approached both NewsX and Madhu Kishwar for their versions.

Speaking on the sidelines of the book launch of her new book Modi, Muslims and Media, Kishwar gave us a generous interview spanning more than hour. Retracing her association with NewsX , Kishwar said, “It began when Monu Nalapat and I met on the sets of a television show both of us were part of. He seemed interested in my work and introduced me to Kartikeya Sharma. We met at Sharma’s Jor Bagh residence and he didn’t seem to know me – in fact he didn’t appear to be too well-informed at all. But when he heard my proposal and got to know about the kind of research I had done in Gujarat, he was very keen on a collaboration. It was on Monu Nalapat’s word that I decided to trust the channel with my footage. My intention was never to make money but to bring out to the world the many uplifting stories I had seen and shot during my tenure in Gujarat”.

However, things were not to go as Kishwar had thought. “The contract that I signed initially clearly mentions that I’d have editorial rights over the content of the show and copyrights of the footage used would remain with me. But the show didn’t turn out to be anything like I had envisaged it.”

Kishwar even claims she was hoodwinked into signing a second contract without being aware of its contents. “After the first two episodes, I decided to put my foot down as I was terribly disappointed with the way things were heading. They assured more involvement but what they actually did was surreptitiously slip in another contract which was to take away my rights over footage that I tirelessly shot over more than a year.” When we inquired why she signed the contract without reading it, she said that she was told that the current contract undervalued her worth and her inputs. “I was made to sign it just as I was entering the studio – and I took them for their word when they said the only difference in the new contract was the amount”, regretted Kishwar.

Kishwar also told Newslaundry that news about Modi giving an exclusive interview to ETV contributed to NewsX’s desperateness to package the show the way did – as an interview. “I was in the NewsX  office on April 1, 2014 when Nalapat told me that they had decided to annul the show as TRPs were dropping because of the show.” Kishwar added that Rana told her that there was mounting pressure from various anti-Modi factions not to telecast anymore of the series.

When Newslaundry called Rana for his comments, he refuted Kishwar’s claim of being duped into signing a second contract whose terms she was not aware of. “The terms and conditions are very clearly laid out in the contract – we are a responsible channel and we cannot let somebody come in the way of editorial decisions”, stated Rana. On being asked why the series was curtailed to four episodes when the first episode clearly has the anchor mentioning it’s a six-part series, Rana said they had used up all footage they wanted to show. When we asked if there was any truth to Kishwar’s allegations that the channel was under pressure from certain sections to withdraw the show, Rana told us that he has “never in his 15 years of journalism heard about anything called political pressure”. This might be true, going by the fact that Rana doesn’t seem to be kept in the loop of nitty-gritties of the organisations he is supposed to be part of. He vehemently asserted that NewsX  never publicised the series as an interview when we asked him the rationale behind projecting the show as an interview/conversation.  Maybe he didn’t get the time see this.

Now he can. NewsX’s efficient online team has diligently uploaded it on Youtube for posterity under the title “Narendra Modi Interview: Watch unseen aspects of Modi’s life Exclusive on NewsX”.

Spending some time on Twitter might also help. This is what his colleague Rahul Shivshankar tweeted and his boss, Kartikeya Sharma retweeted.

Rana also shrugged off questions on the copyrights of the footage. “We have paid for it – it’s our footage”, retorted Rana.

We can only hope that’s the case, for Madhu Kishwar’s surely not going to let things go as easily as Newslaundry did when NewsX ran our footage without acknowledging us, and to add insult to injury, also blurred out our managing editor. Spare the legal suit and spoil the child?