Arnab Goswami, a right-wing news anchor and journalist, is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Republic Media Network, a conservative news organization that pushes Hindutva ideologies in the public domain. He is known for his loud and aggressive interviews that polarize viewers on the basis of religion, airing fake, divisive and inflammatory news, and pushing propaganda for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In April 2020, two Hindu “godmen” and their driver were lynched by a Hindu mob who had mistaken them for child kidnappers, but Republic TV ran programs that claimed that the victims’ Hindu identity was a motive for the crime, a baseless allegation pushed by some members of the BJP.

“I ask today that if a Muslim cleric or Catholic priest had been killed, would people be quiet?” Goswami questioned.

In the same month, Goswami falsely accused the Tablighi Jamaat, an international Muslim missionary movement, for violating COVID-19 lockdown orders, asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “lock up their leadership”, despite the congregation being held before the lockdown was imposed, a claim upheld by courts. These accusations resulted in massive Islamophobic backlash on social media.

“If there is one culprit for what we are going through as a nation in an aggravated manner, like it or not, it is the Tablighi Jamaat,” Goswami said in one of his news programs.

According to Manisha Pande, executive editor at Newslaundry, “What Republic does is it sort of demonizes people, often people who don’t have the power to fight back, whether it’s activists, young students, members of minority communities, or protesters.”

Goswami’s political backing became evident when several BJP ministers supported him when he was arrested and called it an attack on press freedom, despite other journalists being arrested or detained with charges such as terrorism and sedition for speaking out against the government.

In May 2020, Goswami asked on Republic TV “During this lockdown, why does every crowd gather only near mosques?” referring to a crowd that had gathered near a railway station which happened to be near a mosque in Mumbai. However, news reports stated they were migrant workers desperate to get back home after being stranded and jobless.

In October 2023, Goswami told viewers of Republic TV “The same radical jihadist Islamist terrorist thinking that Israel is a victim of, we are a victim of as well … Israel is fighting this war on behalf of all of us.” Certain Hindu nationalist groups saw this as a call to arms and gathered outside the Israeli embassy in Delhi, offering to fight Hamas. 

However, these tactics are not new. In May 2016, Goswami triggered massive online protests after he called a fellow journalist Asad Ashraf on his program at Times Now news channel a “cover” for terror organization Indian Mujahideen when Ashraf questioned certain loopholes in an extra-judicial killing.

In early 2021, Goswami was also incriminated in a leaked document recording WhatsApp conversations between him and Partho Dasgupta, former CEO of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), who was under arrest, in return for manipulating viewer ratings in favor of Republic TV and exposing his nexus with top political leaders.