American media is so prejudiced, it didn't even spare PM Modi and Spelling Bee winner
Two incidents, thousands of miles away, showed that despite all the rhetoric of a rising India and a model Indian-American minority, the leading lights of the American media still harbours a deep ignorance, if not prejudice against brown people. In one incident, the prime minister of India makes small talk with one of America’s leading journalists, NBC’s Megyn Kelly.
Currying favour with her, the well-prepared PM remarks that he saw a picture she had posted on Twitter of her posing with an umbrella, Kelly replies to the PM, the leader of the world’s largest democracy, a man with 30million followers on Twitter, “Are you on Twitter?".
EXCLUSIVE: NBC News' @megynkelly joins Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi ahead of tomorrow's International Economic Forum in Russia. pic.twitter.com/L12ahtuTDO
— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 1, 2017
Tanmay Bhat, the AIB founder, tweeted “OMG, this is cute, Modiji is every Indian dad ever.”
OMG this is so cute, Modiji is every Indian dad ever https://t.co/pLOlN6WVQU
— Tanmay Bhat (@thetanmay) June 2, 2017
In the second incident, an Indian-American young woman, Ananya Vinay, is asked on to CNN for a congratulatory interview post winning the prestigious US National Spelling Bee. Vinay spelled word after word correctly beating out all contestants. The CNN hosts proceed to take away Vinay’s two minutes of fame by asking her to spell “covfefe,” the word Trump made famous in his tweet.
.@NewDay challenges spelling bee champ to spell #covfefe Ananya Vinay: "Definition please? … language of origin?"https://t.co/3iI3eudnBM
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 2, 2017
Vinay doesn’t know about the tweet having been busy wining the National Spelling Bee. Alisyn Camerota, the CNN, anchor responds to Vinay’s question about the origin of “covefefe,” by saying that it's not in Sanskrit which is probably what Vinay “is used to using”. Like with Kelly’s comment to the Prime Minister, some on Twitter called out Camerota for her insulting behaviour.
The thing about both clips is that neither NBC nor CNN saw anything wrong with them. Rather than hide the clips, both networks tweeted and promoted these segments. No one at NBC thought it better to not showcase Kelly’s ignorance of India and her leader. That didn’t matter. It mattered that she went toe-to-toe with Putin in the later part of the clip.
For CNN, the Vinay clip was cute and not insulting. CNN, even double downed on the comment, Trump like, saying that Camerota had made the Sanskrit joke earlier in the week and anyone ascribing any bias to Camerota’s comment “as extremely cynical". While Camerota may have had the Sanskrit joke earlier, saying that the 12-year-old Fresno, California raised Ananya is used to Sanskrit is insulting.
Contrast these two incidents with Bill Maher’s reprehensible use of the “N-word" on his NBC show on Friday. Condemnation of Maher was swift and from all quarters. Al Sharpton, the NYC firebrand, called Maher’s comments unacceptable. Hate him or like him, Sharpton helps ensures that African-Americans as people and their history will be treated with dignity. Maher apologised (not just because of Sharpton).
While neither the Modi nor the Ananya incident rise to the level of Maher’s reprehensibility, the fact remains that an insult or pure ignorance to a brown person from the mainstream media is met with a yawn.
There is no Indian or Indian-American advocate that comes on to make sure that these incidents don’t occur and if they do, there is a swift apology.
The NBC doesn’t care and the CNN has said that those insulted are being “cynical". The CNN is blatantly and objectively wrong, Camerota wouldn’t have said to an African-American contestant that she would be familiar with Swahili or a Hispanic-American that she would be familiar with Spanish. By doing this to Ananya, she treated Ananya as an outsider, a foreigner in her own country. I doubt Camerota is a racist and her comment was driven by ignorance, but ignorance is no excuse.
Ask Kelly – which is exactly what the MEA should do.
The PM is visiting the US this month and the MEA should reach out to Kelly and ask her for an interview. She is likely to get sky high ratings as her news show debuts this month. The MEA should take this faux paus and use to their advantage and secure Modi an audience with America. Modi can tell Kelly of the Indian engineers that have made social media possible from Twitter to Facebook (even Snapchat).
Modi can do it in English or Sanskrit. And perhaps, next time, one of the Indian-American leaders can speak up for Ananya.