Strange but true. A reporter from the state-owned broadcaster in Australia was booted out by India, purportedly the biggest democracy in the world, and the Murdoch media in Australia has ignored it in toto.
The fact that the ABC’s Avani Dias had been forced to leave the subcontinent was reported in The Age, a newspaper that belongs to Nine Entertainment, on April 23. Dias is of Sri Lankan origin.
She was denied a visa after her program Sikhs, Spies and Murder: Investigating India’s alleged hit on foreign soil was aired on the ABC ‘s weekly Foreign Correspondent slot on March 21.
Google News shows that in Australia the news was covered only by The Age, The Guardian and the Sydney Morning Herald – the last-named uses copy from The Age – and her employer, the ABC.
In India, the website Firstpost reported Dias’ expulsion as did The Indian Express, the Hindustan Times, The Times of India and the Deccan Herald. The Indian publications included denials from the government, saying that Dias was not expelled, but rather chose to leave.
Numerous other smaller Indian publications also gave their versions, but took the government’s denial as gospel, with some journalists offering quotes to allegedly refute what Dias had said.
This is not surprising; as Al Jazeera pointed out in a recent video: since 2014, when Modi came to power, India’s media, until then a group that fiercely asserted itself, has been largely captured and censored.
US newspapers the New York Times and The Washington Post carried reports about Dias’ expulsion as did the Alibaba-owned South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. The SCMP was formerly owned by Murdoch.
In the UK, the Independent and the Daily Mail were among the better-known publications to report on the Modi government’s action.
Media moghul Rupert Murdoch owns about 70% of the newspapers in Australia.
His main media organ, The Australian, which reports everything negative about the ABC, even when someone in its corridors breaks wind in D minor, did not carry a single word.
The Australian is one of the few broadsheets in the country and has more than one media reporter on staff.
Neither have there been any reports in the numerous Murdoch tabloids, which, in some cases, are the only newspaper in an Australian capital, for example Adelaide.
In sharp contrast, when China booted out Michael Smith and Bill Birtles – both white men – on September 8, 2020, The Australian ran a detailed story headlined Australian journalists Bill Birtles, Michael Smith evacuated out of China with pictures of the two men.
Smith worked for the Australian Financial Review at the time while Birtles was working for the ABC.
A day later, The Australian ran a second story headlined Journalists are just pawns in China’s bigger game written by Richard McGregor, a commentator from the Lowy Institute. The institute does not appear to be too bothered by the fact that a Sri Lankan woman who holds an Australian passport was thrown out of India by an aspiring Hindu fundamentalist dictator.
The Australian’s foreign editor Greg Sheridan, normally one who defends any slight of the country, has been silent about the Dias incident. One wonders why.
Whatever the reason, no journalist of any stripe or colour can duck and pretend that Dias being thrown out of India like this, more so at the start of what is claimed to be the biggest exercise in democracy, is not a major story.
It merely underlines the fact that despite all its pretensions to being a first world country, Australia in reality is just a parochial backwater.
Sam Varghese is an Australian of Indian origin who has lived in the country for nearly 26 years. He has worked as a journalist for more than 40 years and currently writes for the tech website iTWire. He has worked for the Deccan Herald and Indian Express in India, Khaleej Times in the UAE and Daily Commercial News (now defunct) and The Age in Australia.