The entitlement Western Media, with a history of racist undertones against Indians, is baffling. Which is why, any pushback from the ‘dirty brown people who smell of curry’ feels like ‘attack’ to them. The legacy media houses are not quite used to anyone countering their narrative.
And then they are helped by propaganda outlets from India who have spent past one decade making PM Modi appear like a ‘fascist’ while they continue to speak whatever they wish to without consequences while journalists in opposition ruled states such as West Bengal get arrested for reporting anything remotely critical of Mamata Banerjee government. Western Media chooses to ignore these conveniently while giving patronage to people accused of financial frauds.
But the way Indian media one fine day woke up to a rude shock that what they say is not held sacrosanct by Indians anymore and an average Indian wants accountability of personal opinions and political inclinations being reported as news, the western media, too, will some day realise that Indians will not take things lying down.
Over the years we have called out international publications for their biased and racist reporting on issues concerning India. In fact, according to a research paper published in the Indian Institute of Mass Communication’s Journal Communicator titled “An Analysis of Global Coverage of Events in India,” the global media has produced news that is fully prejudiced and biased to gain from the market while at the same time pushing their agendas. We have seen this during the coverage of coronavirus pandemic – when people in India succumbed to the virus, blown out images of cremation grounds, without any respect for dignity of the dead, no such coverage was given to the lakhs who died due to virus in America, for instance.
Which is why the legacy Western Media gets all antsy when they are called out by common citizens of India for their racism and bigotry. Except, instead of introspecting and course correction, the western media thinks they are being criticised because of their ‘critical stand’ on PM Modi. Umm, it seems like the western media has taken lessons on how to obfuscate from their Brown Sepoys back home in India.
They make everything about Modi and think that the voices on Twitter echo the sentiments of Indians. Their Indian counterparts are so delusional and far away from ground realities that they think Modi is winning elections because of ‘hate’ while their blinkers don’t let them see that in past eight years more people in rural India (who do not really cry fascism on Twitter) now have toilets, drinking water and cooking gas. In fact, Congress leaders had mocked the fact that Modi was building toilets. These were eventually even picked up by Western media where their faithful Brown Sepoys wrote exactly what they wanted to hear to defame India. After all, how can a ‘third world country’ even dream of being a superpower when the real superpowers are busy getting offended over ‘being identified by wrong gender’.
Most people (I say most because as we have seen, not everyone feels so) in India will put India first, with or without Modi. Earlier your racist and biased reportage got a free pass because of lack of accessibility. But thanks to Internet, and that too cheap one, more people are reading what these western media publishes about us. And are not too happy with the biased reportage. Criticism of your reportage is not ‘hate’. You are a professional, at least that’s what you’d like to be called, one would believe, and if someone is calling you out, it is not because of your ‘faith’. You cannot use your faith as a shield when you are being criticised in your professional capacity.
‘Journalists are under attack’ is not an excuse for not being called out because you could not stop yourself from bringing in your bias in your reportage. You cannot play ‘young female reporter’ reporter and infantalise yourself when someone is showing you the mirror.
