Naidu urges foreign correspondents to be objective

Speed Post News Network

New Delhi : The Vice President of India M Venkaiah Naidu on April 7, 2018, advised the foreign correspondents to not to depend on what appears in local hyper critical English media and form opinions. He was addressing a gathering at the 60th anniversary of The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia here.

The Vice President said that Foreign Correspondents must be well acquainted with that particular country’s culture, history, ethos, traditions and the ways of living of its people, before covering developments or any events in a country. He said that the entire country can’t be described as intolerant on the basis of some stray incidents of communal violence, according to a PIB release. If a handful of religious fundamentalists indulge in violence, the entire country can’t be described as intolerant and that majoritarianism is being imposed, he added.

The Vice President said that understanding a flourishing and vibrant parliamentary democracy like India with free press and complete religious freedom to its people is a bit challenging for outsiders. He asked external media agencies working in India to understand India by travelling in the region and meeting people. ” One should not depend on what appears in our hyper critical English media and form opinions,” he added.

” I am told that this organization was established in 1958 by a handful of foreign correspondents based in India. Today, it has grown into an active and vibrant club of more than 700 foreign and Indian journalists covering South Asia. The fact that the membership has grown from a handful to 700 underscores the important role India is playing in South Asia and in world affairs,” Naidu said.

The stride made by India’s space programme is something spectacular given the constraints of resources and technology compared to a developed nation. India sent a rover to Mars at almost one-ninth the cost of a similar mission of an advanced nation, he said. “Though it received coverage abroad, a reputed foreign daily published a cartoon lampooning the success. It had to apologise after readers expressed their outrage at the cartoon,” Naidu said.

“A terrorist is a terrorist irrespective of whether he kills innocents in Kashmir or Kentucky. But surprisingly, some media organizations describe those indulging in terrorism in Kashmir as separatists or militants while any similar incident in the West is immediately dubbed as a terror attack and the perpetrators as terrorists,” Naidu added.