Holding Politicians Accountable Across Party Lines
Political corruption in India is a perennial crisis, but media coverage of it is deeply partisan. Every major news outlet applies a double standard: the party they are aligned with receives sympathetic coverage or silence, while the opposition faces aggressive investigative scrutiny. When the ED raids an opposition leader's premises, some outlets call it accountability while others call it political vendetta. When a ruling party leader faces allegations, the framing reverses. The facts of corruption are the same — the coverage is not.
This is not a BJP-vs-Congress problem. It is a structural feature of Indian political media. Republic TV and Times Now will extensively cover opposition corruption while minimizing stories that embarrass the ruling party. NDTV and The Wire will do the opposite. Hindi belt outlets like Dainik Jagran have different political alignments than South Indian outlets like The Hindu or Deccan Herald. Regional party-owned media — from DMK-affiliated Kalaignar TV to TDP-linked outlets in Andhra — function as party mouthpieces on accountability stories.
The Accountability Gap in Indian Politics
The scale of political corruption in India is staggering, and the accountability mechanisms are overwhelmed:
- The Association for Democratic Reforms reports that 46% of newly elected MPs in 2024 had criminal cases against them, including charges of murder, kidnapping, and fraud
- Electoral bonds, before they were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2024, had channeled over Rs 16,000 crore in anonymous corporate donations to political parties
- State-level corruption — land grab, mining scams, tender rigging — is vastly underreported in national media that focuses on Delhi-centric politics
- RTI activists and local journalists investigating political corruption face physical threats, legal harassment, and in extreme cases, murder
AI-Driven Political Accountability Tracking
The Political Accountability feed uses The Balanced News's AI to flag stories that trigger abuse of power, financial irregularity, and electoral malpractice indicators specifically in the political domain. Critically, the AI does not care which party is involved. A land allotment scam triggers the same flags whether the accused is from BJP, Congress, JD(U), TMC, or any other party. By stripping away the editorial filter that every outlet applies based on its political alignment, this feed gives you something Indian media structurally cannot: accountability coverage that holds all parties to the same standard.
