For many in India, from stakeholders to policymakers, and from politicians to observers, an unrelenting fixation on how the Western media views the events in the country clouds their judgement and thinking. This can be attributed to the colonial mindset, still begging for the white man’s approval, or something that is simply driven by contempt for one’s current government, or mainly because in their minds, the Western media rests at an imaginary pedestal, where their word is an equivalent of the word of god.
Even in their divisions and disagreements, both political wings in India, in different ways, pursue the validation of the likes of New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and many more. While some of these publications do hold an expertise and extensive experience in covering certain issues pertaining to finance, geopolitics, and local politics, their coverage on India is directed by a few individuals cushioned in the national capital who for reasons best known to them choose to view every issue of the country through the lens of the obsolete Lutyens’ media.
The pursuit of validation takes many forms. One, what they say. It does not matter how many people have been enabled by this government through countless public welfare schemes, how many operational successes the military has had in Kashmir, or how many people have been helped during the Covid-19 pandemic with urgent upgrades in healthcare infrastructure and vaccination drives, or how the foreign investments are driving an increasing number of unicorns and startups in India; one lazy editorial attempt to discredit any of the above is passed off as the gospel truth by many in India.
The second form has more to do with why the Western media says what it says. Beyond the ones who celebrate the gospel truth published in the likes of NYT, driven by their contempt of the state, there are many who choose to squander away their energies questioning the editorial incapacity of the staffers in these newspapers. These well-meaning joes push back on the false agendas that are peddled in the garb of investigative journalism, from Kashmir to Gujarat to Arunachal to Tamil Nadu. While editorial incapacity must be answered with policy rationale and logic through Indian portals, the whole pushback is reduced to sharing of the same article with angered exasperation. Again, well intended, but futile.
Read More at https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/the-urge-to-seek-western-medias-validation-must-stop
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