Leveraging Human Rights to Manufacture Consent: An Exploratory Study of The New York Times Reporting on Abuses Against Muslim Communities in China and India

In recent decades, the history of US-China relations has witnessed a variety of developments, from the ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy established by the Obama administration to the trade war initiated by the Trump administration and the global challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result of these changes in government agenda, mainstream media in the US have started employing increasingly harsher language when reporting about China, following a thematic pattern in which the country is described as a deviant state deserving US hostility. This exploratory study of news coverage of abuses committed by China and India against their respective Muslim minorities sheds some light on this pattern by comparing two largely similar situations and drawing some conclusions that could serve as basis for further research on reporting bias when human rights issues and geopolitical tensions are at stake.