HVK Archives: 'American reporting on India biased by contrasts in culture'
'American reporting on India biased by contrasts in culture' - The Economic Times
Suman Guha Mozumder
()
7 April 1997
Title :'American reporting on India biased by contrasts in culture'
Author : Suman Guha Mozumder
Publication : The Economic Times
Date : April 7, 1997
Do cultural differences dictate a certain "distaste" for the
subcontinent that lead to negative reporting from this region by
American reporters?
Mr Selig Harrison, a correspondent of the Associated Press in South
Asia from 1951-1954 and South Asia Bureau chief of Washington Post
from 1962-65, said at a conference on character and impact of
American reporting on India and Pakistan in the last half century
that, "There are cultural factors specific to India that one may
have to explain to see why some otherwise capable correspondents
develop a distaste for India that shows in their stories."
Mr Harrison, now a guest scholar of the Woodrow Wilson
International Centre for Scholars, .observing that "American
egocentricity" affects all foreign news coverage, said: "One of the
reasons for this (distaste for India) is the conflict between
western thought derived from monotheistic religious traditions and
Hindu philosophical systems ... based on religion in which the
supreme deity can have countless manifestations."
A plethora of American scholars and journalists, who have covered
India during the past 50 years, gathered at the Columbia University
here for the two-day meet The conference titled 'American reporting
on India and Pakistan -19471997' was sponsored by the Ford
Foundation and Southern Asian Institute of the Columbia University,
to mark the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the independence of
India and Pakistan.
Recollecting a conference in which he participated with Mr A M
Rosanthal of the New York Times, Mr Harrison said quoting the
latter that Americans "are unusually itchy about India and find it
considerably more irritating than many other countries with which
the US has substantive differences."
"For Americans, he (Mr Rosanthal) said, it is difficult to relate
to a culture in which Yes, No and Maybe can all be answer to a
question and can all be combined in the answer," Mr Harrison said.
"In other words, the dogmatism in the major American religions is
in conflict with - the relativism of Hindu thought," he said.
Another journalist, Mr Harrison gave as an example, "called the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) amoral and during the Cold War, the US
had many conflicts with India arising from the dogmatic American
view of a struggle between right and wrong and a more realistic
Indian view."
"Coverage of India since independence has not changed
substantially, but has fluctuated at times depending on individual
correspondents," he said. American policymakers do not give India
the attention she deserves, he added.
The participants included Prof Stephen P Cohen, director of the
Programme in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security
and Mr Phillip Oldenburg, director of the Southern Asian Institute
at Columbia University.
"Reporting on India and Pakistan is of paramount importance in
helping shape American attitudes towards the region, thereby
influencing official and non-official relationship," the organisers
said. - IANS
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