By Ranjona Banerji
Joe Biden. President of the United States. Much lauded and supported for defeating Donald Trump and winning the 2021 presidential election.
But there is no Joe Biden, President of the United States, coronated, idolised, deified, placed on a pedestal and sold to the voting public as the only person for the job, who will do no wrong, can do no wrong, will be forever great, will reimagine and recast over 250 years of US history, who will undo all the wrongs of the past, be the best at everything and will have his photo everywhere all over the United States.
And now that Joe Biden, President of the United States, has pulled the United States out of Afghanistan, there is anger and criticism of Joe Biden, President of the United States. There are no sedition cases against those who disagree with his policies, and no one has been jailed for disagreeing either.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/americans-give-biden-low-marks-afghanistan-pullout-want-see-evacuations-through-2021-08-30/
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/31/politics/americas-afghan-war-is-over-joe-biden-legacy/index.html
There are just two examples of how the American media has responded.
So far at least, no American channel has shown any propaganda videos of Biden cavorting with Bear Grylls or posing with peacocks as Americans, Afghans and other grappled with the Taliban and fell to their deaths trying to get out of Kabul. There were no photo ops of Biden winsomely waving to persons unseen on a dark night on the Potomac, admiring a gaudy light display, as Afghanistan and US foreign policy is plunged into crisis.
And lest we forget, bar extreme rightwing channels, the American media was brutal with Donald Trump when he was president. And contrary to those Whatsapp forwards sent by all the idiots who hope that you’re an idiot too, the American media has extensively covered rising Covid-19 cases in the USA, the deaths and the vaccination issues.
When I say “idiots”, I have to sadly include everyone’s favourite Wion TV which apparently dedicated a segment to what the US media had not done, when in fact the US media had covered its own Covid-19 problems and India’s Covid-19 problems a lot better that most of the Indian mainstream media.
This does not mean that the American media does not make mistakes or is not annoying or that one article you found glorifying someone it shouldn’t have, is not relevant. It just means that on the whole, the American media is better at doing its job than most of the Indian mainstream media since 2014.
I must clarify this, though. India’s mainstream media can be extremely rigorous when it comes to non-BJP states. It finds great courage and does its job with vigour. All this collapses when it reaches Delhi and the Centre. And of course, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Many employed journalists you speak to in private tell you that their management “allows” them to criticise other Central ministers of the BJP, but not Modi and Shah. Cartoonists have lost contracts for targeting Modi and Shah.
Thus, leadership problems within the Punjab and Chhattisgarh Congress are assiduously covered. But three chief minister changes in Uttarakhand, a BJP-ruled state, whaat? You can’t hear me any more? Line is bad? Connection lost?
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Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia every Tuesday and Friday. Her views here are personal