April 20, 2005 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
And they admit it: one reason why there is a lack of a genuine debate on foreign policy in India is due to mainstream media’s failure to set the terms. While domestic policies are robustly, even passionately, discussed on television and in newspapers; the discourse on foreign affairs and national security suffers from chronic establishmentitis (two recent cases in point). And the one instance it did (and this perhaps refers only to The Hindu) it was a stand against ‘hawkishness’ after India was attacked.
“Studies show that the Indian media follows the trend set by the leaders”
India’s media has not set the terms at all for the country’s foreign policy, despite being influential. Emphasising this, N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu , said here on Tuesday that studies often showed that the Indian media had, by and large, followed the trend set by the leaders of the country in the foreign policy domain.
While this was true of détente or hawkishness in India-Pakistan relations, some among the Indian media refused to toe the line during the Kargil crisis, Mr. Ram said, in response to a question at a meeting he addressed under the auspices of the Singapore-based Institute of South Asian Studies. [The Hindu]
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