ABSTRACT
Criticism of mainstream media as being “biased” has emerged as a defining characteristic of right-wing discourse all over the world. Such expressions are coupled with the establishment of right-wing news outlets that seek to undermine professional journalism. But while scholars have examined the operation of such outlets in the context of Western democracies, anti-media populism in the Global South has received little scholarly attention. Through a thematic analysis of articles published on OpIndia.com- a right-wing news site in India, this paper seeks to address this gap in the literature and identify the discursive strategies employed by the right-wing media to discredit the mainstream press in India.
Notes
1 For example, conservatives in the United States have argued that that mainstream media are characterized by a so-called liberal bias since the 1940s (Major, Citation2012), while the term lugenpresse was used by the Nazi regime to discredit opponents (Noack, Citation2016).
2 The Ram Janmabhumi movement, led by the Hindu right, was aimed at rebuilding a temple at the birthplace of the Hindu deity Lord Rama by demolishing a 16th-century mosque believed to be standing on the temple’s original site.