Jaipur: During the recent youth protests that began in Jantar Mantar and spread across the country, several protesters made their anger against ‘Godi Media’ – the Ravish Kumar-given name for big TV channels that not only toe but further the government line – clear. A new white paper highlights the root of that anger by portraying how one of these channels, Republic TV, attempted to frame a spontaneous, peaceful, mass protest by the country’s youth as a foreign conspiracy.Between July 20 and 26, when the protest was drawing thousands of youth from across the country who demanded accountability from the Union government over its failure to prevent question paper leaks, Republic TV’s main talking points included the alleged involvement of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), an alleged US hand behind the protest, a “foreign funding cluster”, alleged conversion by missionaries and the “tukde tukde gang”.The white paper, titled ‘Manufacturing the Foreign Hand: How Republic TV turned a student protest into a foreign conspiracy in seven days’, was brought out by the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), Massey University, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa, New Zealand. It notes that while for a decade, TV news media portrayed Pakistan as the main villain, that hierarchy has been rebuilt for the latest youth movement, with the US being painted as the main culprit.Students’ demands absentAccording to Professor Mohan J. Dutta, director, CARE, the white paper analysed 25 broadcasts of Republic TV between July 20 and 26 and counted 58,941 words of unique broadcast content about the student protest during these seven days, only to find that students themselves were almost entirely missing from the channel’s coverage.“Across 58,941 words of broadcast content about a student protest, the students’ demands are structurally absent,” says the white paper.While journalists flocked to Jantar Mantar to document the historic protest that ultimately resulted in the resignation of senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Republic TV chose to portray the protesting students as central characters of a “criminal conspiracy” by foreign forces.The white paper says that on the evening of July 21, Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami opened his broadcast on Republic TV with a question. The nation, he said, wants to know how the American embassy knew in advance about the mass mobilisation, down to the last detail.“It was not a question. It was a verdict wearing the costume of an inquiry, and everything that followed was built to make it feel inevitable,” says the white paper.Marco Rubio, the CIA and links to new FCRA amendmentThe channel linked the protests to the US secretary of state’s visit to Kolkata, when Marco Rubio met the Missionaries of Charity.“Over seven days the network assembled a cosmology: a CIA that writes protests, an embassy that publishes the script, a messaging app that smuggles revolution past the jammers, a safety guide reclassified as a criminal toolkit, a Ladakhi engineer unmasked as a foreign-funded dynast, an America-returned student leader directing lynch mobs with a pointed finger, and behind them all the deep states of Washington and Beijing, working through the opposition to stop a bill,” the white paper adds.The CARE analysis found that in Republic TV’s broadcast between July 20 and 26, references to the United States as a hostile actor (164) outnumber references to China (89) and Pakistan (76).“It binds America, China, the CIA, the embassy, the deep state, the FCRA, religious conversion, Trump and Rubio, the Nepal precedent, regime change, and the domestic opposition. This is the motive machine, and its answer is material: trade pressure, the Indian Ocean contest, and above all a funding law and the evangelical money it threatens. Inside it, the tightest bonds are America with the deep state, and religious conversion with Trump and Rubio,” says the white paper.The US, Republic TV has argued, is trying to stop further tightening around foreign contributions to NGOs in India. It should be noted that these changes have been widely criticised within the country, and the Narendra Modi regime has been accused of using the FCRA law to target those whose politics it does not align with.CARE’s analysis found that in Republic TV’s coverage of the youth movement, CIA appears 43 times, the American embassy 29, and Donald Trump and Marco Rubio 28.“Across the whole week, the one consistent answer the network gave to its own question of motive was the FCRA (Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act) amendment, the law that would tighten the state’s grip on foreign funding to Indian civil society and, in the network’s telling, stop the conversion of Hindus to Christianity. A protest about a leaked examination was thereby narrated as the last desperate move of a global evangelical intelligence complex defending its money pipeline,” it continues.“The strongest sustained associations in the corpus bind the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) to religious conversion and to Marco Rubio. The protest is narrated as American retaliation for a law that will choke evangelical money. The same law is the state’s principal instrument for shutting down civil society,” says the white paper.“The phrase “foreign interference” itself appears only 24 times. The frame is built instead from material that sounds forensic: a funding statute, an embassy advisory with dates, a figure of 65,000 rupees per social media post multiplied into 65 crore, a money trail, millions of dollars from a named American missionary project. Precision is the aesthetic. Evidence is not the point. The frame works because it feels like investigation while functioning as accusation,” it adds.Pakistan returns after Greta Thunberg supports studentsBut Pakistan was not retired from its usual role of the villain, it was merely kept in reserve, says the white paper.On July 26, as climate activist Greta Thunberg expressed her support for the Indian youth movement, Pakistan made its return as the primary antagonist in Republic TV’s coverage.“For five days Pakistan barely registers. On the final day it multiplies twenty-five-fold. It returns not as a state with armies but as a stain attached to foreign sympathisers, and the statistical company it keeps is not the CIA but a Swedish climate activist,” says the white paper.“Thunberg is glossed through her supposed links to “Pakistan-backed groups” and “Khalistani groups”; Jeremy Corbyn is introduced as the voice of the Pakistani constituency in Britain; and the resulting composite, the pro-Pakistani foreign sympathiser, is handed to Indian panellists as a loyalty test designed for them to fail. Pakistan does not return as a country. It returns as a contaminant, transmitted by association, which is why its closest statistical partner across the corpus is not the CIA but a Swedish climate activist,” it adds.The white paper adds that the single most important thing here is that an expression of solidarity from abroad was processed, on air, as an admission of authorship.“Under that logic, any movement that is heard beyond its own borders can be declared foreign-made,” it adds.“It marks the exact point where Hindutva’s oldest anxiety, the fear of conversion, is welded to the authoritarian state’s newest instrument, foreign funding regulation, with an American enemy supplying the charge. The frame produced in the studio is the frame enforced in the statute, and both are aimed at the same people: students, minorities, NGOs, and the journalists who cover them,” says the white paper.Systemic portrayal of students as criminalsThe white paper also demonstrates the systemic portrayal of students as criminals in the channel’s coverage.“The claim is repeated relentlessly that these are not students. Selectively edited street interviews are run and rerun, in which people say they are not sitting the examination. From this the network empties the category of the authentic student and refills it with its own creation, the professional gunda paid to attend,” says the white paper.It adds that by the final broadcast, the anchor is describing what the real youth of India look like, and they are at home, fit, sober, filing patents.Internet Freedom Foundation’s safety guide dubbed as ‘toolkit’Moreover, when the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) published a protest safety guide advising participants to leave primary phones at home, disable fingerprint and face unlock, and cover their faces against facial recognition cameras, Republic TV renamed it a “toolkit” and broadcast it as proof of criminal intent, says the white paper.However, in the same programmes the network celebrates the Delhi police’s use of facial recognition and demands that everyone it identifies face action, it adds.“Put the two together and the trap is complete: to protect yourself from identification is to confess, and to be identified is to be convicted. There is no lawful way for a young person to attend a protest in this framework. Digital security is criminal intent; the absence of digital security is a criminal record,” says the white paper.It adds that the vocabulary of goons, gundas, hooligans, and lynching appears 84 times in the channel’s coverage, more often than any geopolitical frame except America itself.“A freeze-frame of the CJP convener pointing a finger is broadcast repeatedly and narrated as an instruction to lynch. A gesture becomes a command. A crowd becomes an organised criminal conspiracy. The conspiracy provisions then appear in the police first information reports,” says the white paper.‘Lumpenism and perversion’In a video clip of the channel’s coverage shared by Republic TV from its official Facebook handle, Goswami can be seen describing the protest at Jantar Mantar as “lumpenism and perversion”. He also describes Thunberg as a “very dangerous person” who is a pro-Pakistani person with links with “Khalistanis.”“Any government facing protest can now run this template. It requires no intelligence finding, no evidence, and no cooperation from the accused. It requires only that somebody, somewhere, expresses sympathy,” says the white paper.