Why Western Mainstream Media Outlets Click in India

Novelist Elizabeth Gilbert, who acquired a halo especially after the blinding success of her phenomenal work Eat, Pray, Love, recently withdrew from publication her new book Snow Forest in the face of protests on social media from people who have never read the book. Their contention: it is set in Russia.

In another incident, Ukrainian writers boycotted a literature festival because also in attendance was a Palestinian writer who happened to have endorsed a tweet by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin calling for ‘denazification’ of Russia’s neighbour. Do Palestinians not have the right to hate Nazis?

After all, since when has reading Tolstoy been the sine qua non for calling for a ban on his book? Or for that matter on movies of ace directors you’ve never watched or music by maestros you’ve never heard of?

In India, especially, the rabidly pro-Ukrainian reaction of sections of the media is unsettling for more reasons than one. Foremost among them is the excessive dependence on Western sources. After all, the Western media aren’t in it for the love of the Ukrainian cause alone but because of it being inadvertently co-opted to accomplish a larger agenda, which has nothing to do with journalism. Each player in this game is a cog in the wheel – whether they are aware of it or not – of a grand strategy to maximise the profits of those who make money selling arms and those who work at their behest.

Evidently, the public pronouncements of neocon writers such as Anne Applebaum, the highly successful American-Polish columnist, on F16 fighter sales to Ukraine can make the secret phone chats of Henry Kissinger and Nixon sound like innocent blabber. This is the same breed of people who sanction with all their intellect and soft skills the trampling of Palestinian rights and the criminal blockade on Cuba. The tears they shed are not only selective, for ‘selective’ only suggests a political position. These neocons are, on closer look, rent-seekers who contort history to create careers and wealth for themselves and their own kind.

We can ignore them, perhaps. Let them be the bad eggs that they are.

Many months ago, I interviewed professor Richard Sakwa, one of Britain’s foremost experts on Russian and international politics. It was shortly after the crisis erupted in Ukraine early last year. He was of the opinion that the coverage of events then by the legacy media in the West was extremely disgraceful. All this follows a pattern that we have seen or read in history.

I was also lucky to interact with John Pilger, a journalist I consider the best among the best, a man who advises you not to be a messenger without examining the agenda behind the message you carry. Speaking about the persecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange by Britain and also its otherwise sainted members of the media, Pilger said, “It (the ordeal Julian had to face) reveals that both the democratic and judicial systems in the land of Magna Carta are corrupt—that is to say: behind its democratic facades, society is ruled by powerful undemocratic interests that are ruthless in getting their way. Julian’s suffering tells us this truth loud and clear—we should, we must, learn from it.”

In India, all this propaganda from the West does leave an impact, and a big one at that. Although the government stood firm in protecting its strategic interests, disregarding what the media and the leaders in some American vassal states thought of Indian priorities, the Western media campaign did leave an indelible imprint.

The problem here is about predictable consumption, not very dissimilar to how Western lifestyles are being aped in India. You could compare it to how a good section of Indian elites and the middle classes imitate the West in diet and then fall prey to lifestyle diseases.

With the probable exception of a few seekers of the truth, most others, be it because they are lobbyists or naive, have unfortunately shown a penchant for consuming each word disseminated by the West without complaint.

Although technology has empowered us with the power to research and verify news from traditional news outlets, as if by a strange force of habit, a good chunk of professional journalists tends to see as absolute truth whatever the Western media carries as an incontestable truth.

This is notwithstanding stellar journalism by the likes of Seymour Hersh — who was once a proud torchbearer of the mainstream media in the West before he realised he was a misfit there and had to work solo. His expose of the apparent destruction by the Americans of the Nord Stream pipeline, an act of betrayal of the interests of its own allies, is proof of all the lies brandished in the guise of news. But the story didn’t click much back in India as it did in the West, if you go by the scanty coverage of the implosive report. Instead, they all kept going with the second-hand peddling of lies and more lies. Even incisive commentaries on the situation that went viral online by those like Professor John Mearsheimer were largely ignored by TV channels in India. Simply put, we are ready to be spoon-fed by Western news agencies — almost all of whom have an axe to grind -- on international relations. It is a sad plight, as tragic as it is deplorable.

It was the great actor Daniel Day-Lewis who said, “The voice is the fingerprint of the soul.” What we see unfortunately from a section of pundits and even accomplished journalists is the parroting of shallow voices of the likes of Jake Sullivan, US National Security Adviser. You don’t have to have a psychiatry degree or be a voice analyst to comprehend that such people are where they are because they are masters of spin. And that their voices lack spunk. Monotonously repetitive empty talk is the apt expression for it.