Project 2025: What a Trump Administration Portends for India

As the US Presidential race reaches the home stretch, the political rhetoric becomes shriller, accentuating the polarization in American society. Almost every major US media outlet has become an extension of one or the other campaign. Channels piously claiming to report only the facts, and the truth are selective with the first and economical with the second. They cover events of their preferred candidate, editing out gaffes in interviews. The other candidate is selectively quoted out of context. Opinion polls are cherrypicked. It is a textbook lesson of how misinformation and disinformation can be nurtured in a free press. There is therefore a rich irony in the capacity building exercise that the US State Department has launched in India through the US Consulate General in Hyderabad, with a grant of US$175,000, to provide Indian journalists with hands-on training in “countering disinformation, consulting multiple sources, and utilizing fact checking resources”.