Monday, December 23, 2013

Desi Explosion in the Mainstream Media

 
The Indo-Pak presence in the news media has skyrocketed in the last few years.  I have recently noticed this phenomenon as I hear the reporter's and correspondent's names mentioned while listening to the news programs on NPR.

  • At NPR you have Laksmi Singh, Arun Rath, Meghna Chakrabarti, Madhulika Sikka, Ammad Omar, Shankar Vedantam, and Akash Kapur.
  • at PBS you have Hari (Hariharan) Sreenivasan - Senior Correspondent, Director of Digital Partnerships.
  • Until recently at  MSNBCMartin Bashir,[1] and a correspondent for NBC's Dateline NBC.
  • at CNN: Fareed Rafiq Zakaria
    is an Indian-American journalist and author. From 2000 to 2010, he was a columnist for Newsweek and editor of Newsweek International. In 2010 he became editor-at-large of Time. He is the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria
  • at Wall Street Journal: Gautham Nagesh (covers the FCC and tech policy from the Washington, D.C. Bureau of The Wall Street Journal).
  • at Bloomberg: Ramesh Panuru (columnist, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor at National Review).
  •  
I remember the first time I ever heard of people from India; I believe it was watching an old movie on Black and White TV, starring Sabu; I also remember Hadji, a character from the Johnny Quest Cartoon series in the mid 60's. Then, came the Beatles and their Music, (they made a psychedelic pilgrimage to India) along with Ravi Shankar (the Sitar musician), Gurus and Sandalwood Incense.   
Around 1967 there was a Indian clothing invasion consisting of Bermuda (Calcutta Madras) Shorts (multi-color checkerboard) and Sandals, the Nehru Jackets and Thom McAn Shoes with Calcutta Bombay Buckles...  Then came the Krishna Consciousness Movement and The Maharishi with his Transcendental Meditation...

Fast forward to 2013 and the Desi or Indo-Paks (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the dyaspora) are all over the American Mainstream Media.   

India: Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, and Farsi... 

Now, Mainstream USA...


Arsenio.

Update 12/26/13.
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