Media bias in South Asia

Claims of Media bias in South Asia attract constant attention. The question of bias in South Asian media is also of great interest to people living outside of South Asia. Some accusations of media bias are motivated by a disinterested desire for truth, some are politically motivated. Media bias occurs in television, newspapers, school books and other media.

Bangladesh

Some media outlets considered to the left of the norm have been accused of having an anti-India and pro-Pakistan bias.

India

There have been claims that the history of the Islamic invasion of India is being systematically whitewashed and censored in Indian school-books and in other media (e.g. Shourie 1998). On the other hand, Hindu nationalists have been accused of showing a hostile bias towards Muslims, Christians and sometimes Marxists in the media. In some probably rather extreme cases Marxists have been accused of painting a too rosy picture of Stalin in school books, while some have accused Hindu nationalists of painting Hitler as a "school-book" hero.

Pakistan

There is serious evidence of ethnic cleansing in Pakistan; the minority non-Islam population (Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs)has gone from 23% in 1947 to 2% in around fifty years. Internation rights groups, like the Center for Indic Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, have accused the media of not informing the public about this issue.

Sri Lanka

The goverment of Sri Lanka has been accused of controlling the media. Measures like the Public Security Ordinance and the Sixth Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution have been accused of limiting a reporters freedom.

The Sixth Amendment to Sri Lanka's constitution, inserted as Article 157A, has been accused of threatening civic disability and seizing of property.

The Public Security Ordinance (PSO)law is often applied liberally when the goverment applies emergency regulations. This is quite often as Sri Lanka has been ruled under Emergency for a cumulative total of over 20 years, since it gained independence from the British.

The Saturday Review, the English paper published in Jaffna and the Aththa, the Communist Sinhala language daily were banned in the early eighties under the PSO. When the Aththa was banned its press was also sealed. In the seventies, the government sealed the printing press of the Independent Newspapers Ltd. (Davasa Group), using the emergency regulations.

Under the Emergency Regulations (E.R), all material relating to a subject specified in a gazetted presidential proclamation, has to be submitted for censoring by a 'competent authority'. The 'competent authority' is usually politically favoured civil servant. Recently, the regime made history by appointing a military officer as the government censor.

Material censored under such provisions has included comment on the high cost of living, on the dismissal of an employee of a state corporation, allegedly for an article he wrote for his trade union journal, on the marketing problems of passion fruit growers, criticism of a minister's statement in Parliament about a public corporation, and a reference to an alleged assault on two civilians .

Outside of South Asia

South Asian study departments have been accused of showing an anti-hindu and/or eurocentric bias by Yvette R. Rosser [1] and others.

Literature

• Shourie, Arun: Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud. New Delhi, 1998.

External links

Bangladesh

• saag Bangladesh

India

• Indymedia, India
• Arun Shourie on "Eminent historians"
• Historians versus history - Ram Swarup

Pakistan

• Massachusettes University

Outside of South Asia

• The Groan - Loss of scholarship and high drama in south asian studies - Yvette Rosser
• Bias in the RISA Lila

See also

• Media bias
• Media bias in the United States
• Media bias in the U.K.
• Media bias in Germany
• Media bias in Italy
• Media bias in the Middle East
• Censorship in South Asia