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India: the curious case of International coverage
  • india-media-coverage.jpg
    india-media-coverage.jpg
The elections in India, besides confirming Premier Narendra Modi in government, have had a curious 'side effect' internationally. In fact, all the articles and documentaries celebrating the funeral of Indian democracy disappeared from TV channel schedules and media and social media pages. For months in fact, as the date of the elections approached, the international media, particularly the Anglo-Saxon media, increased their 'India' themed articles. And the majority of these celebrated, precisely, the funeral of India's centuries-old democracy by fearing the rise and consolidation of a government described as a 'regime' with all the relevant negative attributes: authoritarian, fascist regime, oppressor of minorities and the democratic system. Not only that: at the same time, following the killing in Canada of an avowed terrorist member of an organization, the Khalistan Movement, which has to its credit massacres of civilians and cold-blooded murders, and described, however, by the native press as a 'plumber,' 'priest,' and other such amenities, a whole series of articles appeared on various social media and in the 'official' press pointing the finger at Indian intelligence. Guilty, according to unidentified 'official sources' of commissioning murders, like that of the plumber in question, committed on foreign soil. Sort of like the Americans did in Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden: but what the Americans are allowed, of course, the rest of the world is not. In the case at hand, the provenance of the so-called investigative 'dossiers' was soon proven: Pakistani intelligence, the notorious ISI described by many as "the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world that learned, and well, how to use media and social media from its Chinese brothers. Back to the elections, interviews with opposition members of the Indian Parliament, famous or infamous members of the liberal-minded intellectual elite were everywhere. Curiously, however, no one abroad took the trouble to ask for the famous 'cross-examination': that is, to compare different opinions by reporting conflicting views and leaving it to the reader to draw conclusions. Not only that: the articles in question were signed by relatively unknown journalists along with even more unknown Indian journalists who reported, in practice, very few facts and very many opinions. Opinions that, in most cases, bordered if not outright lies on the massive omission of key details. One example for all: the Times Uk published at one point an article titled, "Modi wants to abolish sharia law." Apart from the fact that it is not clear why sharia law should be in force in a non-Islamic country, this is an outright lie that omits a fundamental detail: it talks about the Modi government's intention to promulgate the so-called Uniform Civil Code, a single civil code valid for all citizens regardless of religion or ethnicity. But what in any other country would be considered a sacrosanct battle for civilization becomes, in the case of the articles about India, yet another proof of the government's contempt for minorities. Doesn't it? It doesn't matter. Nobody, or very few people, will bother to check anyway. Just as no one, or very few people, will bother to verify, for example, how the Al Jazeera correspondent, at the inauguration of the Ayodhya temple, was going around desperately looking for someone from the Muslim community to confirm her prefabricated theses. Or of how most foreign correspondents turn, in the case of Kashmir, to local stringers who are given the specific assignment to look only for separatists and dissidents in the pay of Pakistan: thus, a sparse minority is portrayed as mainstream opinion representative of the majority of citizens. It is also curious to record how, in the case of the heavily rigged Pakistani elections that took place a few months earlier, no one, least of all the international press, dreamed of raising concerns, doubts or pointing out irregularities of various kinds. Of how no one dreamed of pointing out the 'peculiarities', to put it mildly, of the U.S. electoral system while instead, just before the Indian elections, a series of articles and interviews began to circulate raising doubts about the regularity of the voting mechanism. Articles that melted away like snow in the sun the moment it became clear that the BJP would not have an absolute majority. Again, the results were read as propaganda, and the current government's third consecutive victory was passed off as a defeat. Seeing the world's largest democracy rise to fifth world power obviously does not appeal to many. Especially those countries, without naming names, where economic and developmental achievements come at the price of suppressing the human and religious rights of minorities. 
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