Western Media Bias Against India

By Pranay Aggarwal

The western media has been consistently targeting India with negative press coverage. The remarks made by a spokesperson of the ruling party against Prophet Mohammad and the arrest of Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair saw India being quickly labelled as illiberal, intolerant and communal. Not just the ruling dispensation but India as a country was branded as such.

Worse still, western media reportage of India reeks of selective journalism. The horrific beheading of an Udaipur shopkeeper and a chemist’s murder in Amravati, Maharashtra for expressing support for the BJP spokesperson on social media did not garner the same amount of outrage, or even coverage, by the global media as her comments did.

A recent research paper by the Indian Institute of Mass Communication titled ‘Analysis of global media coverage of events in India’ shows that media outlets such as Washington Post, The New York Times and others have grown exponentially in India by using divisive and negative words while reporting events in the country. The correlation between their digital readership growth in India and their sensational reportage is strong. In the 500 headlines analyzed, the most common words were 'Fear', 'Hate', ‘Violence’, 'Muslim', ‘Mob’ and 'Cow'. Western media houses are thus attempting to further deepen the faultlines prevalent in Indian society for financial gains.

The coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic in India by western media was also selective and biased. Even as India pulled up its resources and minimized the devastation caused by the global pandemic; the western media unabashedly published pictures of dead bodies floating in the holy rivers. The same media was far more discerning when scores of people died in the first wave of the pandemic in 2020 in the US, UK and Europe.

Despite Indian science and technology leapfrogging in space exploration, biosciences and clean energy; western publications continue to portray India as a land of snake charmers and cow worshippers. One telling example is the 2014 cartoon published by The New York Times mocking India’s successful Mangalyaan mission. The cartoon showed an Indian in a dhoti and with a cow knocking at the door of the so-called 'Elite Space Club'. The elite publication conveniently omitted to mention that what it was mocking was one of the cheapest interplanetary missions ever and that India had succeeded in the Mars mission in its first attempt; a feat which even the USA and Russia could not achieve. After it was called out for its blatant anti- India bias, the NYT was forced to apologize.

Western media also frequently trivializes the national security issues of non-Western countries and exaggerates their own. While reporting the massacre of 40 CRPF soldiers in Pulwama in 2019, NYT called it ‘an explosion’ despite Jaish-e-Mohammed claiming responsibility for the dastardly terrorist strike. In contrast, a truck driver running over people in Manhattan in 2017 was called the ‘deadliest terror attack’ by the same media outlet.

Most of these global media houses have minimal staffing for covering India’s affairs. Their foreign correspondents don’t have the ability to understand the complexities of Indian society and the vibrancy of Indian democracy. They indulge in armchair journalism with branch offices in only major metro cities like Delhi and Mumbai; which cannot comprehend the nuances of a country like India where more than 68 per percent of the population resides in rural areas.

Why they do it?

The west perhaps continues to believe that developing and civilizing India is still the White man's burden. Why else, then, despite the copious output produced by Indian cinema every year; only a Slumdog Millionaire manages to grab both eyeballs and awards in the west.

The idea of a resurgent and assertive India doesn’t fit well into the western worldview of the orient. The west will rather have us as the primitive damsel in distress, whom only the white hero can ‘save’. Colonial hangover prevents the west from seeing us as equals, or, horror of horrors, as their superiors in any sense and at any time.

Western media reports what suits western interests. Western governments, think tanks and non- governmental agencies fan and finance popular unrest against government measures. Western media then follows it up by publicizing how undemocratic in spirit the democratically elected Indian government really is. For this, they invent neologisms and new phrases. So, India is an ‘electoral democracy’ (as if it’s a bad thing) but not a ‘liberal democracy’ as per the V-Dem Institute in Sweden. We are a ‘flawed democracy’ according to The Economist Intelligence Unit. For Freedom House, India has seen increasing attacks on press freedom since 2014 and we are now among “countries in the spotlight’’.

Why it matters?  

The media is an important pillar of democracy. Media reportage is necessary to keep the general public aware about the state of affairs in a country. However, biased media coverage does not augur well for a democratic polity. It neither creates a more informed citizenry nor a more vigilant government. Instead, it runs the risk of undermining the credibility of media itself. Little wonder then that increasingly, people at large are relying upon the decentralized and open social media as their source of news instead of the controlled funnel of mainstream media outlets.

The trend of anti- India reportage lays bare the poor journalistic ethics that most western outlets adhere to. Many Indian journalists and publications take a cue from their western counterparts and then descend down the same, dirty road of selective reporting and agenda-pushing.

Regrettably, western media is given disproportionate importance amongst the literati and the city based elites in India. In drawing room conversations in Lutyens; what The Economist says on Modi carries far more weight than what the world’s second largest newspaper, Dainik Jagran, reports or what the ‘unwashed masses’ think of him.

In conclusion, exploiting the faultlines of a complex and diverse society like India may generate some revenue for the foreign media. However, these half-truths should not be mistaken for responsible journalism. The western media needs to introspect and course correct. Only then can they gain a reputation of factually accurate reporting and unbiased editorials, and be taken seriously.

Also Read: Mahatma Gandhi’s Statue Defaced in Canada, India Condemns the Act

About the Author 

Pranay Aggarwal is an eminent sociologist and public intellectual. He is India representative in UNESCO’s International Sociological Association and a member of Indian Sociological Society’s research committee on sociology of social movements. Having completed a course in sociology from Stanford University, he presently mentors civil services aspirants at IAS Gurukul and is Convenor of Indian Civil Services Association.