The veteran journalist traces the evolution of the global media from its Cold War positioning to its current crisis of credibility
NEW DELHI — Veteran journalist and television commentator Saeed Naqvi has strongly criticised the role of both Western and Indian mainstream media, often referred to as “lapdog or Godi media”, accusing them of acting as instruments of government propaganda, especially in the post-Cold War period.
Naqvi was speaking at a public meeting at the Press Club of India on the ‘Throttling Press Freedom and the Attack on Freedom of Expression to Enslave Society’ organised by the civil rights organisation Jan Hastakshep recently.
Drawing on his decades-long experience as a globe-trotting journalist and editor, Naqvi traced the evolution of the global media from its Cold War positioning to its current crisis of credibility. He linked the rise of ‘Global Media’ to its Indian counterpart, ‘Godi Media’.
Naqvi said the disintegration of the Soviet Union triggered a global political shift, paving the way for the United States and its NATO allies to attempt to establish total dominance in the 21st century. “The market’s victory was declared, and to realise the American century, an enemy had to be created,” he noted. “That enemy became the Muslim World, and the ‘Global War on Terror’ was launched.”
“To realise this vision of total global dominance, a new enemy had to be manufactured. This led to the infamous ‘Global War on Terror,’ which began with the invasion of Iraq,” Naqvi said, reminding the audience that the invasion was based on intelligence dossiers, later acknowledged as fabricated, about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Referring to the 2003 Iraq War, Naqvi said the media’s transformation was visible in its real-time coverage of the invasion, which was based on false intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction. “We saw the birth of the global media from the terrace of the Al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad,” he said. “This was also the rise of embedded journalism, where reporters were attached to military units, reporting from the war front with the military’s perspective.”
Citing British MP Arthur Ponsonby’s wartime classic Falsehood in War-Time, he reiterated the adage “Truth is the first casualty of war.”
Naqvi highlighted how media organisations in the West lost credibility during that period. “The media no longer stood for truth. It became a vehicle of state propaganda, fused with the government’s agenda,” he remarked.
According to Naqvi, this “real-time propaganda” marked a departure from traditional journalism. While Western media had always harboured biases, it once enjoyed a semblance of editorial independence and credibility, both of which eroded in the embedded era.
He said Indian media mirrored this shift. “The Indian mainstream media grew during the same period, taking cues from the West — not in their pursuit of truth, but in their transformation into mouthpieces of power,” he said. He warned that Islamophobia, used as a tactic in the war on terror, has now become a staple feature of many media narratives, both globally and in India.
On the future of journalism, Naqvi acknowledged the rise of independent digital media platforms and the efforts of young journalists to speak truth to power. “While mainstream media has failed us, a new generation is carving out a space for honest journalism in the digital space,” he concluded.
Noted academic Prof Rakesh Batabyal offered a sharp critique of global and Indian media’s transformation into instruments of state propaganda, especially in the post-Cold War era. Batabyal, a professor at the Centre for Media Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, provided a conceptual framework to understand this media transformation. He invoked philosopher Hannah Arendt’s theory of the “Banality of Evil” to explain how authoritarian regimes create alternate truths by simplifying and manipulating everyday problems and linking them to imagined enemies.
Referring to the continued genocidal Israeli onslaught in occupied Gaza, he said this barbarity has been hidden in the garb of “humanitarian aid”.
“For fascist regimes, the media is not an institution of inquiry or public accountability. It exists only to legitimise their version of truth,” Prof Batabyal said. He expressed concern that an entire generation is growing up internalising this constructed reality, as the education system no longer trains students to critically examine information or question dominant narratives.
Both speakers underscored the urgent need to reclaim the media as a public good and warned of the long-term consequences of an uncritical society steeped in propaganda and falsehoods.
