New Delhi (Sputnik): The headline of an article in The New York Times that read "In India's Election Season, an Explosion Interrupts Modi's Slump" has infuriated Indian Twitter users.
Ananth Krishnan, a senior Indian journalist and visiting Fellow at Brookings India called the article "bizzare", while others termed it hate-filled.
In bizarre, Orwellian language, the NYT's editors describe a terrorist attack in India as an "explosion" (was it a gas cylinder?) and later quietly change it to "bombing" without correction or explanation pic.twitter.com/7RKNst1UJ6
— Ananth Krishnan (@ananthkrishnan) March 12, 2019
Why has @nytimes deleted this tweet and changed the headline 'In India's Election Season, an Explosion…' to 'In India's Election Season, Bombing Interrupts Modi's Slump'? The whole things reeks of not just bias and poor journalism but also of hatred, bigotry and #Hinduphobia.
— Avatans Kumar (@avatans) March 12, 2019
Wow what a India hate filled article. Explosion??? If suicide bombing happened in New York would you still call it just an "explosion"? @nytimes https://t.co/F8U1VHupTb
— Akshay Marathe (@akshaywcam1) March 12, 2019
Ishan Prakash, editor of the country's biggest news agency ANI, said that American media outlets had lost the plot when it comes to reporting in the sub-continent.
“An explosion”, I Guess going by NYT’s lexicon the twin towers fell due to a “mishap”. American media outlets have lost the plot when it comes to reporting in the sub continent. https://t.co/Tt3eEZC8Ep
— ishaan prakash (@ishaan_ANI) March 11, 2019
Husain Haqqani, director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute and former Pakistan ambassador to the US, termed the article "troubling", as the NYT chooses to describe a terrorist suicide attack as "an explosion". "What's next? Describing a beheading as loss of a human head?" Haqqani furiously asked the NYT.
Another Twitter user expressed his sentiment in myriad of sarcastic ways: "So 9/11 was a plane crash?"
if pulwama was an explosion, 9/11 was a plane crash? it's very insensitive of NYT to make light of the losses we suffer from islamic terrorism!
— vivek singh (@vivekbabaji) March 11, 2019
If the incident in Pulwama was just an explosion, then 9/11 was a plane crash. My condolences to the Al-Qaeda workers who lost their precious lives just because of a stupid building.
— Sanjay Gautam (@Sanjayg551) March 11, 2019
Earlier, this month, seeking to establish that the Indian Armed Forces are in alarming shape, a New York Times article mentioned that an aerial clash, the first by the South Asian rivals in nearly five decades, "was a rare test for the Indian military" and that it left observers a bit dumbfounded.
In a clash that marked India's retaliation against a 14 February suicide attack on a paramilitary convoy that killed at least 40 soldiers, the Indian Air Force allegedly shot down a Pakistan Air Force F-16 using a MiG-21 Bison on 27 February. Pakistan has denied that any of its F-16s were shot down. The Indian Air Force later displayed parts of an AMRAAM medium-range missile that was recovered in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir, claiming that they had been launched by a US-made jet.
