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Comment by WeylandYutani | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting that it took Western media to blow the whistle.

You could write books about everything that is wrong with my country (many people do) but independent journalism is sacrosanct.

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It's identical to the Western response to the Iranian government murdering many thousands of their people (who were protesting) prior to the pandemic. Versus the response to the Khashoggi murder by the Saudis. Both reprehensible regimes, the media treated one death as being particularly special. Going by the massive coverage of Khashoggi, you'd get the impression thousands of murders is less important than one, and you'd be right re the Western media's obvious bias (they dislike Saudi Arabia more than Iran, and Khashoggi was one of their own).

The Iranian government was already known to be terrible to its people. The Saudis ordering an assassination _abroad, using their embassy, in such a violent way on a dissident_ made a lot of people aware of the problem that was the new Saudi regime which had some Western alignment. It’s not that this death was more important, it’s just revealed a big change in Saudi Arabia

Which ignores the vast gap between coverage in the one murder vs the thousands of murders. The bias was on open display, and it's a perceived political alignment issue (Saudi Arabia is quite friendly with US conservatives traditionally and far more hostile to US liberals; ~95%+ of journalists in the US vote left and they're rarely shy with their bias in the Trump era; Saudi was relatively friendly toward Trump and it's openly hostile toward Biden; all of this is quite obvious).

The news media is looking for new news, not old news. An ally killing someone in their embassy is new news; a regime of disrepute killing protestors is the same old story.

It's the same reason why election fraud in the US or Europe gets coverage when it's just a couple votes, but Russia's elections don't get much coverage. Everyone knows Russia's elections are a joke, but someone getting arrested for voting their deceased relative's ballot is unexpected.

It's not a measure of importance, it's a measure of newness.

exactly, it's what I wanted to point out but you did it better

It's a pattern repeated in many places. Single large events, a school shooting, the Khashoggi murder, big chemical spills, always get more coverage than repeated/ongoing or smaller events. IMO it's less a judgement on importance than a result of novelty or shock. Over time as events fall into routine people get bored of them so news naturally moves on. Look at the coverage of the Ukraine war it's dropped off a cliff since the early days of the invasion because we're in both the winter lull and there's not much novel to report about it every day.

Blow the whistle on what? Nothing in that documentary is new, most Indians know it. It has been reported and widely covered by Indian press before. It is just new to you (or the west).

You are forgetting one thing - most Indians knew it and believed it back in 2001 but now there's a whole generation who has been brainwashed to believe that the whole western world's media is against India because they don't want to see India be a power. They genuinely believe in this. These are the people who were probably 5 year olds then and are now in their late 20s or early 30s.

Obviously they don't think why they want to be a "superpower" when we still don't have clean water and our air is getting worse (literally unliveable by global standards)

Most Indians still know, it has been covered continuously these past two decades. Or maybe I am in the wrong information bubble. BJP’s political opponents won’t allow anyone to forget it.

Most people don't know all the details. They see news that court did not find any evidence and that's all they hear. Everyone wants to stay in a bubble of their liking.

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