RAMA LAKSHMI: No, the Western media isn’t biased in reporting Indian Covid

By Dilip -

Ever since the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic ripped through India, three words have dominated public conversations: ‘Western media bias’. The villain in the room this time isn’t Pakistan, JNU, or urban naxal. It is Western media, and its intense coverage of the Covid carnage, funeral pyres, queues for oxygen cylinders, harassed patients, and overworked doctors.

But most of all, it is the usage of photographs of the funeral fires, shot up-close or aerially, that has enraged some in the Indian commentariat. The charges range from Orientalism to the Western desire to see India fail by choosing to focus on ‘bhooka-nanga’ tragedies. Let me tell you as someone who has worked in The Washington Post for nearly three decades, this is the oldest cliché thrown at Western media by middle-class Indians, government officials, and even by Indians who have lived in the West for decades.

The most circulated conspiracy theory on WhatsApp and Twitter is that the American papers do not cover death and tragedy the same way they are covering Indian Covid fatalities. This is completely untrue. You believe it readily because it fits that deeply nursed complex of yours about how the world is plotting to keep India down. Instead of ‘doing the work’ of questioning poor planning, public complacency, and distracted politicians, you find it far easier to identify the enemy outside. It also plays into the matter of hiding family shame from outside — ‘Ghar ki baat ghar mein rehne do’....

https://theprint.in/opinion/no-the-western-media-isnt-biased-in-reporting-indian-covid-heres-why/655101/

Geeta Pandey - Varanasi: Anger rises as coronavirus rages in Modi's constituency

VINEETHA MOKKIL - An Open Letter to Modi Bhakts in America: Your God has Feet of Clay and Blood on His Hands

The Hindu priest struggling to cremate India’s Covid dead – video

पुजारी का कर्म

Nandini Sen Mehra: And night has come upon my land

Suhas Palshikar: A monumental failure of governance // ‘There should be no clampdown on information, people can voice grievances on social media’: Supreme Court

Mukul Kesavan - Kumbh vs Corona The logic of Hindu nationalism / Milind Murugkar: The political project of Hindutva is up against many contradictions

Ramachandra Guha: The unmaking of India

Sunita Viswanath - I refuse to cede Hinduism to those who want to make India a Hindu rashtra

Public Appeal by Hindus for Human Rights, USA

Swati Chaturvedi: It Was BJP Who Made It Mamata vs Modi. Too Far

Bharat Bhushan - Covid-19 drugs: Eager beavers of BJP play God


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