India has consistently been portrayed in a negative light in the western media. Be it the time when ISRO launched Mangalyaan to the Mars or India’s rising stature on global stage after 2014, it is because of the prejudice and the racism that is deeply rooted in the west for many years now, that their media tries to paint a bad image of the country.
With the rise and rise of India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the western liberal media has been going all out with their anti-Modi stance.
The Indian Institute of Mass Communication recently conducted a survey on the nature of western media coverage of the spread of the corona virus in India and the handling of the situation.
According to this survey conducted by the IIMC,
- 82% media persons believe that the coverage of COVID19 pandemic in India by a section of the Western Media is ‘biased’.
- 69% media persons said India’s image took a beating by such negative coverage, while 56% said such coverage must have negatively influenced the opinion of the Indians living abroad.
- 60% media persons believe that the Western media had an agenda of tarnishing the image of India when they covered Covid-19 pandemic in India, while 71% said the stories lacked a balanced narrative.
- 71% believe that neutral news is not published.
- 52% blamed international politics and 47% blamed domestic politics in India
- 34% said it was a conspiracy by pharma companies internationally
- 21% said regional politics in Asia is to blame.
- 63% of the respondents said that they did not share on social media the news of the Western media which had defamed India internationally
- When asked how they accessed these Western publications/media, they said they used multiple platforms but indicated their preferences as Google News suggestions (59%), YouTube and Twitter (both 40%), Facebook (34%) and Instagram (27%).
IIMC is a premier Institute in the field of Journalism and Mass Communication under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India.
Director General of IIMC, Prof. Sanjay Dwivedi said that this survey was conducted by the outreach department of the institute in June 2021.
The survey received 529 responses from Indian media persons who included journalists, media scholars and media educators.
The survey included 64% males and 36% female respondents. The respondents were mainly from print, digital and broadcast media.
The journalists who participated in the survey stated that there has been a serious lack of sensitivity and responsibility in the coverage of the COVID19 pandemic in India by the western media. They added that while the western media exercised restraint while covering COVID details in their home countries, they presented the situation in India with undue sensation.
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