New York Times’ Toxic Anti-India, Anti-PM Job Ad Triggers A Storm

New Delhi: A job posting by The New York Times (NYT) for a correspondent in India has triggered a storm in the country for its biased prerequisites and conditions.

The job posting on NYT’s official website is for a South Asia business correspondent in New Delhi.

However, the wording of the post has brought the publication’s credibility under fire. It described Prime Minister Narendra Modi as someone who advocates “self-sufficient, muscular nationalism, centred on the country’s Hindu majority”.

The job description, which was posted on July 1, also seemed to grudge that India has ambitions to surpass China’s “economic and political heft”. “Under Narendra Modi, its charismatic Prime Minister, India has moved to rival China’s economic and political heft in Asia – a drama playing out along their tense border and within national capitals across the region,” it said.

The publication also criticised the new IT rules in India by saying that the “government’s growing efforts to police online speech and media discourse have raised difficult questions about balancing issues of security and privacy with free speech”.

Several commentators have criticized NYT’s job post. They said the publication was looking to hire a correspondent in the country who has a clear bias and would be overly critical of the Indian government and the Prime Minister.

Kanchan Gupta, an advisor to the Indian government, tweeted, “NYT has dropped all pretences of impartiality with this job ad for a South Asia Correspondent. They are clearly looking to hire an anti-Modi activist who can also stoke anti-Indian sentiments in our neighbourhood. With this, the paper qualifies as a foreign-funded NGO.”

Many social media users in India also questioned the need to make such scathing remarks in a job description.