ABSTRACT
No Indian journalist was encouraged to even apply for Saudi visas. Those journalists already in the Gulf region found themselves stuck under heavy censorship. During this same period, the United States and the United Kingdom were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to Saddam Hussein to hire his Boeing aircraft to ferry Western hostages out of Baghdad—but that was not seen as a violation of sanctions! The irony, however, escaped the Indian media. Not a single editorial made this point. In sum, the Indian media failed to cover the Gulf War adequately—even in light of the limitations over which they had no control. The Western media, however, did not fail. They actually succeeded beyond belief in their objectives. They drummed up support for their war, they packaged it as a just war, and they succeeded in dehumanizing and depersonalizing Third World peoples in general and Iraqis in particular.
