After one 'interrogation', why is Rahul meeting the press off-record?

Those of us who watched the Rahul Gandhi interview conducted by Arnab Goswami know what it was: long, sustained, some questions repeated in the hope the interviewee would return to the question from unrelated issues. His PR team obviously thought it was a disaster and did not line up similar encounters with other TV channels. But what did Rahul Gandhi think of the interview? Now we know. He told some 40 Mumbai journalists in Mumbai, in the words of Free Press Journal’s Anil Singh today, “It was not an interview, it was an interrogation with all those lights in my face.” CP Surendran wrote in DNA,“He (Arnab Goswami) was not interested in listening to what I had to say. Rahul Gandhi seemed quite amused by his ordeal in the TV studio.” [caption id=“attachment_1423633” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Why are the meetings in secret? PTI[/caption] Those of us who had heard Rahul Gandhi in that “interrogation” also know that Rahul Gandhi seemed not to hear the questions. He sometimes seemed to make it appear it was a dialogue of the deaf. But now we know what Gandhi thought of it. The two reports in the two newspapers did not reveal if the prospective prime ministerial candidate of Congress was game for another interview. The conversation organised by the Congress in a Mumbai restaurant next to Girgaum Chowpatty turned out to be something else. Journalists fired questions at Rahul even before he could complete a response. Probably the fraternity had taken to this method from the television anchors where the guest was not important. As Surendran reports, a question he posed may “not have been heard in the melee.” More than this, what should be interesting is the reason why Rahul Gandhi was meeting journalists but off the record? The fact that most – save the two mentioned above – did not even carry any nuggets from this 90-minute long event was that they were told it was off-the record. But not all journalists are willing to swear to it. If it was, why was a photographer taking pictures, for whose albums? This was not the first such Rahul Gandhi-media interaction soon after the polls were found to be around the corner, though what is remembered are the two. One where he sauntered into the Delhi Press Club and spoke of the need to tear up a law-in- the-making and the other where, standing next to his mummy-cum-party chief he said how the party would change in ways one cannot imagine. His visits to most big cities seem to have such not-for-reporting meetings with the journalists, with TV cameras barred on the schedule.  The intent could be to talk to journalists and blunt the criticism that he fights shy, as much as Manmohan Singh does, of the media. But when meets, and talks, why the condition that it should not be reported? One conclusion can be that he can let the journalists know that he is a convivial guy, with a sense of humour, and can be comfortable with a whole group of them. But conditions apply – no reportage, when, actually with the elections being announced, using the media as a vehicle for his messages would help. During poll times, everyone looks for message multipliers apart from public meetings. Yesterday, he stood up during the proceedings, and to the amusement of the gathered journalists, mimicked Narendra Modi. And showed up, how, after about ten minutes, he is unable to hold the voice at the pitch he starts with. However, as one journalist present there said, his considered utterances included what he later said at a public meeting at Bhiwandi, the power-loom city close to Mumbai.