Imagine if Western media had described the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, not as lawlessness and an assault on democracy but as democratic ferment against a corrupt system beholden to money and power. The thought is absurd. Yet in the Global South, politically driven riots — sometimes even violent mob attacks on state institutions — are routinely depicted in Western outlets as righteous uprisings against venal elites.
Western media have perfected a seductive but dangerous narrative: the romanticized tale of youth-led “revolutions” toppling supposedly repressive, graft-ridden governments abroad. In just the past month, coverage of political unrest in Madagascar, Nepal, Indonesia and the Philippines has followed the same script. The ouster of Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh in 2024 was packaged as a heroic liberation, only for Islamist repression and chaos to follow.
This is not journalism. It is selective storytelling that applies one moral framework at home and abandons it abroad. What would be denounced as sedition in Washington is rebranded as democratic awakening in a fragile state.
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