Finally, as India crossed one milestone after another when it came to vaccinations, crossing the 2 billion mark in June 2022, fully vaccinating over 90 per cent of its adult population, TIME remained silent.

Fear Beyond the Pandemic

COVID-19 wasn’t the only aspect that TIME chose for its malicious reporting. It seems that when it comes to India, everything and anything is fair game for running stories that paint a grim picture.

In May this year, as the temperature began to climb and the Monsoons were delayed by a few weeks, the magazine was quick to sensationalise a phenomenon that in reality, was hardly an issue – power cuts.

TIME went as far ahead as to link climate change (high temperature) as a critical factor that is disrupting education in the country.

Moreover, it all but preached a sermon to the world when it claimed that “India’s Unbearably Hot Schools Show We Must Climate-Proof Education”.

Within a span of a few days, another article on how ‘Western’ architecture was resulting in over-heated homes was published.

Scrolling back just a few months, an article actually claimed that a coal shortage in India is good news because even if it may cause power cuts, it would push India towards clean energy.

There were two glaring problems with such an inference:

a) Neither was there a coal shortage nor was India headed that way.

b) Not only is India amongst the top-5 nations with respect to installed capacity of renewable energy, but at the time the article was published, our nation had all but achieved its COP21 targets no less than nine years in advance.

Selective Reportage to Mask Many Positives

Finally, at a time when India has progressed towards achieving Ease of Living for Indians – TIME has found issues that it can highlight to mask the good work that is being done.

An example is the recent ban on the use of single-use plastics which the magazine has chosen to report as a radical policy which is likely to suffer at the implementation stage.

In fact, to drive its point home, the article actually takes into account the impact of the ‘sudden’ change on informal workers and the poorest of the poor.

Not once does the article take notice of the thousands of local and cottage industries that make biodegradable products and now stand to get a boost with the government’s initiative.

Furthermore, the plan to limit and ban single-use plastics was announced by PM Modi in 2019, notified by the government in August 2021 and implemented from 1 July 2022.

Similarly, with social media emerging as the primary tool for spreading misinformation that has the potential to impact national security, the government went ahead with a plan to make social media platforms accountable.

But for TIME this appeared to be an act of “Digital Authoritarianism”.

Given its penchant for unnecessary sensationalism and blowing non-issues out of proportion, it appears – at least to the average reader – that the TIME magazine may very well have crossed the grey area that differentiates journalism from animosity.

In the digital age however, this shift, especially in a nation that excels in tech-adaptability, isn’t something that can remain hidden; however subtle the shift may be.

Also Read: How The New York Times’ misreporting, distortions and fabrications radically alter history

How China’s Communist Party is infiltrating the global media circuit

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