Journalism Without Horizons: Media Power and the Erosion of Cosmopolitan Reporting in South Asia

Abstract

This essay examines the structural barriers to cosmopolitan journalism in South Asia, arguing that the region’s journalism must contend with three overlapping geographies: colonial cartographies, post-Partition sovereignties, and civilizational continuities. Rather than translating these layered realities, journalism has become a site where borders are rhetorically hardened by political, commercial, and platform logics. Within the sub-continent, Indian journalism occupies a dual position: simultaneously subject to structural pressures yet disproportionately influential due to scale and platform dominance. By treating ultra-nationalism as a structural feature rather than episodic distortion, the essay reveals how media organizations align editorial agendas with state narratives for survival. It shifts attention from “headline wars” to the quieter erosion of journalism's humanistic function, offering an accounting of what has been lost: journalism as a tool for translation, restraint, and moral imagination across contested borders.