Sanjeev Sanyal exposes atrociously biased NYT report that reduced 40-min chat to 2 words

Sanjeev Sanyal, Principal Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Finance, on Wednesday slammed a "biased" report by New York TImes after they quoted only two words by him in their article for which they'd actually held a 40-minute conversation. Responding to the report shared by Jeffrey Gettleman, the South Asia Bureau Chief for the New York Times who along with Suhasini Raj, Sameer Yasir and Karan Deep Singh wrote the article titled 'The virus trains: How lockdown chaos spread COVID-19 across India', Sanyal shared the full recording of his discussion and said, "This can be used as a case study on how Indian officials can deal with biased Western media."

'I have the full audio recording'

"Yes, your journalist did speak to me but the article does not reflect the conversation and uses an arbitrary two-word "quote". Would you like to hear the conversation? I have the full audio recording," the economist tweeted. In another tweet, Sanjeev Sanyal said that his whole conversation of 30-40 minutes was "about the thinking behind India's policy response." He alleged that the journalist was "not interested and she already had an agenda to push a pre-decided story."

'The journalist was not interested': Sanjeev Sanyal

"When I did not play along, she tries in the last 10 mins to put words in my mouth," the Principal Economic Adviser said. "Since I did not provide a quote useful to her agenda, I was just given a two-word quote in the article just to show that NYT gave all sides a chance. I am posting the recording so that it can be used as a case study on how Indian officials can deal with biased Western media," he further said.

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The report also mentions that the PM Modi government's COVID-19 task force is dominated by “upper-caste Hindus”, and claims that it didn’t contemplate how imposing the lockdown will induce desperation, panic and chaos for millions of migrant workers. Health Minister Harsh Vardhan responded by saying that "not even in our wildest imaginations do we think about the caste" and that the task force’s members had been chosen for their "competence, capabilities and intellectual abilities."

"The trains became virus hotspots. Packed beyond capacity, they ran from India’s biggest cities, which were virus hotspots, to rural areas that had very few if any virus cases," Jeffrey Gettleman said as he shared the report on Twitter. 

Special trains carrying migrant workers were flagged off from various cities on 1 May for the first time since the lockdown was enforced. The operation of these trains, however, led to a political mud-slinging, with the opposition accusing the Centre of charging fares from migrants and then the Centre accusing some states having non-BJP governments of not providing permission for the migrant trains to run. 

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