How Islamophobic are Malayalam News channels: Study finds 120 instances
Amid the filing of a case against an Islamic YouTuber on the complaint of a TV anchor over an alleged misogynistic remark during a debate, a report has claimed that Islamophobic frames through visuals, reports and presentations describing Islam and Muslims as suspect and linking them to terrorism were found in Malayalam news channels, with 120 instances documented between January 2024 and September 2026.
The report, titled Islamophobia in Malayalam News Channels: 120 Presentations (January 2024–September 2026) and published by the media-monitoring initiative Islamophobia Watch, scrutinises nearly 1,000 days of regional broadcasts.
It clarifies that the term does not encompass every report critical of Islam or Muslims; rather, it demarcates Islamophobia as an editorial reflex that routinely associates an entire community with “suspicion, security threats, terrorism, intolerance and social backwardness”.
The report also examines the role of headlines, visuals, questions, and the structure of television debates in placing Muslims in positions of “suspicion and otherness”.
The lion’s share of the 120 documented instances emerged from Janam TV, an outlet noted for its ideological tethering to Hindutva organisations and politics, alongside News18 Kerala, which drew censure for the “number and nature” of its visual cues
The study also shed light on those who owned and ran the channels, and on their political and religious leanings, highlighting Asianet News’s corporate links with BJP state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Reporter TV managing editor Anto Augustine’s past political candidacy with an NDA constituent, and Big TV chief editor Sujaya Parvathy’s public identification with the Hindutva ideology and willingness to embrace the label “Sanghi”.
However, the report extends its indictment of newsroom bigotry beyond the avowedly Hindutva platforms, pointing to mainstream outlets including Asianet News, Manorama News, 24 News and Mathrubhumi News, which, even while taking positions against Islamophobia and reporting on discrimination faced by Muslims, reproduce.
Among the examples cited is Reporter TV’s December 2024 coverage of MEC 7, a fitness collective, which allegedly described the involvement of Jamaat-e-Islami and SDPI as the “infiltration of religious fundamentalists”, while criticising the airing of The Kerala Story, which portrays Muslims as a source of terrorism and Islamophobic propaganda, by the government-controlled broadcaster during the 2024 Lok Sabha election campaign.
Other instances of biased reporting include Asianet News coverage of the mob killing of Ashraf in Mangaluru, Janam TV’s description of a Kochi solidarity programme as an “urban Maoist gathering”, and Reporter TV’s coverage surrounding the Palluruthy hijab controversy.
The report further cites instances in which Reporter TV branded Al-Falah University a “terrorist hideout” amid the Delhi blast probe, before official findings were concluded, with its editorial leadership popularising the term “white-collar terrorists” to designate educated Muslim professionals, while Asianet News similarly lumped twentieth-century philosophers together with terrorists.
“Sharia gym” was used, as well as a headline asking whether a man had pretended to love a woman in order to convert her, while pointing to election coverage that repeatedly portrayed the “Muslim vote” as a distinct political bloc while giving comparatively less attention to the consolidation of Nair and upper-caste Hindu votes behind the BJP.
Yet the report acknowledges a contradiction: some of the same organisations criticised for Islamophobic presentations have also carried out significant reports and discussions against Islamophobia and discrimination faced by Muslims.
It therefore argues that the issue cannot be reduced to the political beliefs of individual journalists. Instead, it calls for Islamophobia to be examined as a broader media structure shaped by news selection, editorial priorities, headlines, language, visuals, debate formats and the prominence given to particular stories.