From November 2022 to February 2023, INSIGHT UK conducted a survey asking Hindus and Indians living in the United Kingdom what they thought of the British media. The main findings point to grave and serious omissions from reports on a wide range of topics from the BBC, specifically concerning Indian and Hindu news reports.
INSIGHT UK’s research made various observations about BBC narratives and found balance was lacking.
Research on BBC articles found various conjectures about Hindus, often with denial, obfuscation or moral equivalence to discredit any narrative that Hindus are victims. Denial of atrocities on Hindus could be leading to more Hinduphobia as the survey results suggest, or making young Hindus develop self-hate if they are only perceived by the media as villains, or perpetrators and never victims.
Key Analysis Findings
In the report, Insight UK says that it received overwhelmingly negative feedback during the survey and hence it became imperative to conduct a comprehensive analysis specifically focusing on the BBC’s reporting of BHI communities. The analysis revealed the following key findings:
- A lack of balanced reporting on a range of topics, such as Hindu persecution, Hindu festivals, Kashmir, Indian women’s rights, and cow smuggling.
- Hindus are frequently portrayed inaccurately as villains, perpetuating false stereotypes.
- News stories highlighting Hindus as victims often receive inadequate coverage. There were numerous cases found of selective coverage, using solely opinion. Facts build stories but views shape the stories and narrative. Selective views can risk creating selective outrage.
- News articles often reference dubious, unreliable, or controversial sources.
- There is an urgent need for improved, balanced, and accurate reporting.
- Fair representation of programmes related to BHI communities is crucial.
- There is an imbalanced focus on ideology, religion, and “caste”.
In summary, the analysis underscores the necessity for enhanced reporting standards that address these issues and provide a fair and accurate representation of the topics affecting BHI communities.
As survey respondents stated that the BBC was considered to be the most unreliable news source for matters relating to Hindus and India, further research was sanctioned by INSIGHT UK to analyse BBC articles.
INSIGHT UK used text mining analysis on 1,000 recent BBC India articles, with the results finding some odd journalistic behaviours:
- Indian opposition leaders are barely scrutinised in any coverage if at all covered.
- About Kashmir, “Indian-administered” is mentioned almost 6 times more than “Pakistan-administered” Kashmir.
- There is a hyper-focus on religion, with around a quarter of all articles mentioning religion or caste. Odd that in a country of 1.4 billion, religion is a constant topic for the BBC.
- Terms like “right-wing” and “nationalist” are used heavily, with little or no reference to “left-wing” or “socialist”, despite India having a diverse spectrum of political parties.
A set of 1000 articles were analysed, spanning from June 2022 till March 2023 to ensure that there was no skew in data during election periods. Data was refined to exclude any collisions, for example when searching for “Modi” for the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, any other references of similar names such as “Nirav Modi”, were excluded, the Insight UK report says.
The Insight UK research into BBC reportage concludes that the BBC’s coverage of Kashmir is mostly from what the BBC perceives as India’s relationship with Kashmir. Some of the above data complements both INSIGHT UK survey data and post-survey research. The BBC seems to have a hyper-focus on religion, specifically on Hindus and Muslims. This will no doubt subconsciously shape readers’ perception of India based on what the BBC covers.
The report can be accessed here: https://t.co/iv9P7KsJnc
Aayush Pal 
Sindhuri Sai