From:  "ganapa vijai" <gvvijai@h... 
Date:  Fri Jul 5, 2002  5:24 am
Subject:  Francois' open letter: On biased western reporting on 
India
 
French journalist's open letter against foreign media's anti-India 
bias 
 
 
To 
Ed Lane 
 
Correspondent Dow Jones 
 
From 
 
Francois Gautier, Correspondent, Ouest-France 
 
 
Dear Ed, 
 
Apropos your letter which you have circulated to all the members of 

the Foreign Correspondents' Club of South Asia, in which you wrote: "I 
think it's important the FCC puts out a statement on recent moves by 
the Government to go after journalists it apparently doesn't like." 
 
I wonder if you would send such a haughty message if you were in 
China, for instance, where you would risk being immediately kicked 
out, or even spend a few weeks in jail. You go on to declare: 
"Firstly, there's the Kashmir Times reporter Iftekhar Geelani who is 
in jail; the harassment of Alex Perry by the FRRO for writing an 
article unfavourable to the Government; and now a raid on Tehelka. As 
a pattern, it's bad news and I think we should strongly say that such 
actions are inimical to a free and fair Press." 
 
 
Ed, pardon me for saying so, but when you speak openly in such a 
manner, it is as if you think that you are in a conquered country, or 
that India is still under White colonial rule: "Who is this arrogant 
Indian Government to tell us, mighty Western journalists, what to 
write or not to write!" But any Government in the world clamps down on 
who it considers anti-national elements within its territorial 
boundaries. 
 
The US itself goes to the extent of invading Panama, when it considers 
its interests threatened there, to bomb Yugoslavia, because it did not 
like its President, or to take over Afghanistan, where it is 
definitely going to burn its fingers. And why should not the Indian 
Government take action against a man suspected of channelling funds 
used against India's national interests? 
 
You are claiming freedom of the press, but in this country, we, 
Western journalists, have always been free to criticise, belittle, 
slander even, without any fear of reprisal. And God knows how much we 
have come down hard on the BJP, RSS, or VHP in these last few years, 
using adjectives totally out of place, which do not honour our sense 
of equity, such as "fundamentalists," "fanatical," "Right- wing," 
"nationalists," even "Nazis." Did the BJP, the VHP, or the RSS (a 
harmless group if there ever was one), kill six million Jews like 
Hitler? On the contrary, Hindus have been - and are still in Kashmir - 
the target of an ethnic cleansing without parallel in the history of 
this sad world. Do you think that in France, or in the US, an 
exclusive club of only Indian journalists, Hindus even, would be 
allowed to function like a kingdom within a kingdom, with the freedom 
to criticise and support movements which are inimical to French or US 
national interests? Do you believe that these Indians could castigate 
the French or American President, as Time magazine did recently? I 
don't think so. 
 
In fact, I remember when French President Pompidou was dying of cancer 
while still in office - and it was an open secret - the Press kept 
quiet about it as a matter of decency. And how your own media was kind 
to Ronald Reagan, a man not particularly known for his intelligence, 
and who kept making one fumbling mistake after another when it came to 
foreign policy. How is it that we Western correspondents are so 
tolerant with our own faults, but come down so hard on this 
Government, which has to deal with problems which are several times 
more complicated than in our own countries? And why is it that we 
Westerners do so much business with Communist China, a Government 
which has so much blood on its hand, and that includes one million 
Tibetans killed in the last 50 years? Three million of the Chinese 
people were liquidated by Mao. 

The history of Western coverage of India has been one of biased and 
unfair reporting. Look at Kashmir, for instance. We have been writing 
and broadcasting relentlessly in the last 13 years that "India accuses 
Pakistan of training, arming, financing and sheltering Indian Kashmiri 
separatists, a fact which Islamabad denies," implying that the Indian 
Government is lying, knowing fully well after all these years that 
logically it had to be true. 
 
But no, in the name of the so-called "impartial reporting," the BBC, 
CNN, AFP, Reuters and others, who have an old colonial account to 
settle with India, kept on mouthing these untruths. 
 
Now General Musharraf has publicly acknowledged the fact under 
American pressure. But has any one of us apologised to the Indian 
Government for having slandered it for 15 years? No way: We are too 
arrogant and conceited to recognise our own mistakes. Why don't we say 
the truth: That our editors in Paris, Washington or Bonn always expect 
the same stories from us, stories that show India in derogatory light, 
a Third World, corrupt, fundamentalist country, because they think 
that it is the only way to sell India to their readers? 
 
Indeed, isn't it a fact for many of us that the harder we hit India, 
the more we are successful with our foreign editors? 
 
I know India is not an easy country for a westerner and now and then I 
am as frustrated as you, dear Ed. The heat, the slowness of 
everything, the bureaucratic hassles, the intellectual servility of 
Hindus sometimes, who must blame themselves for most of their ills, 
including the lack of respect they get from us, Western 
correspondents. 
 
But it is also my living experience in 33 years here that India is 
pro-West, a bastion of freedom in an Asia represented by Muslim 
fundamentalism and Chinese hegemonic tendencies. Why don't we say this 
also? Talking of journalistic objectivity, it is also our duty to 
highlight the greatness that India represents with its spiritual 
resonance. We need not be blind to India's shortcomings, particularly 
when we have enough reasons to express the hope that India represents 
for mankind. 
 
Yours 
 
Francois Gautier 
 
http://www.dailypioneer.com/secon3.asp?cat=\story8&d=FRONT_PAGE