NPR’s Chronic Racist, Xenophobic, Unethical Treatment of Hindu Americans: Academic Edition

On September 11, 2019, following an overtly Hinduphobic tweet by NPR’s Furkan Khan, I started a petition appealing to NPR to demonstrate greater journalistic integrity in their reportage on Hindus, Hinduism, and India. The petition quickly gained support, reaching nearly 10,000 signatures within a few weeks.

The petition laid out four demands:

1. The Hinduphobia in Ms. Khan’s Twitter history was easy to surface. NPR will make a formal and public statement apologizing to the Hindu community about Furkan Khan’s tweet and will investigate Hinduphobia in their staff’s Twitter history. NPR will hold their journalists’ and employees’ social media representation about Hindus and Hinduism to the same ethical standards as it does regarding other groups.
2. NPR will investigate their biased practices of reporting on Hinduism and whether or not it meets the standards of ethics and fair reporting that they apply to every other minoritized group in the world.
3. NPR will review who and what informs their assumptions about Hinduism and critically investigate the…