The Washington Post lays off 300 employees: Read about sacked ‘journalists’ Pranshu Verma and Gerry Shih, who have been the face of relentless anti-India propaganda

The Washington Post has announced it is cutting one-third of its workforce and has begun large layoffs across all divisions of the corporation, which would drastically reduce its coverage of international and sports news. The decision was announced on Wednesday (4th January) and will affect staff members from all departments.

The United States (US) daily’s sports section will disappear and some of its remaining correspondents are going to cover sports culture in the features unit. Its books and metro segments along with the flagship news podcast “Post Reports,” will all face the same outcome. The move asserted to bring “stability” by executive editor Matt Murray has been described “absolute bloodbath” and as one of the “darkest days in the history” of the newspaper which is owned by Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos.

However, Murray discussed the necessity to compete in a saturated media industry and admitted that the daily has had difficulty reaching “customers” and stated, “Today, the Washington Post is taking a number of actions across the company to secure our future.” He added that the overseas coverage headcount will be reduced with about 12 bureaus maintained “with a focus on national security issues.”

He told the employees on call, “We all recognise the actions we are taking today will be painful, most of all, of course, for those of you who are directly affected, but for everybody. I know that the reset is going to feel like a shock to the system and raise some questions for everybody.” Local and foreign reporters had also begged Bezos to keep their jobs prior to the announcement but to no avail.

The action also had repercussions for the company’s Indian staff as many notable names, including Shashi Tharoor’s son, Ishaan Tharoor, were among the more than 300 individuals who were shown the door. Likewise, many impacted parties shared the same on social media. Pranshu Verma, the New Delhi Bureau Chief and Gerry Shih, the Jerusalem Bureau Chief of The Washington Post have also been ousted.

Notably, the two have emerged as prominent anti-India figures connected with the outlet already infamous for its biased coverage, similar to the rest of the Western media. “Heartbroken to share I’ve been laid off from The Washington Post. Gutted for so many of my talented friends who are also gone,” Verma, who was with the newspaper for four years, referred to the association as an “honour.”

Shih called his time with The Washington Post a “privilege” and mentioned that he had spent more than seven years travelling the world “for a paper I very much believed in.” He remarked, “I’m gone along with the rest of the ME (Middle East) team and the majority of teammates from Delhi to Beijing to Kyiv & Latam. Sad day, but it was a lot of fun and we raised hell.”

Meet Pranshu Verma who tried to target the Modi government to protect his job

According to The Washington Post’s official website Verma was “responsible for covering news out of India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan. Verma joined The Post in 2022 and covered artificial intelligence. He previously wrote about technology at the Boston Globe and reported on diplomacy and transportation at the New York Times.”

His journalism career began at the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he covered politics in New Jersey alongside prisons. He holds degrees from the University of Delaware and the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. Now, the axe has fallen on his job despite publicly slandering the Modi government to his superiors.

Verma tried to beg the management to spare his position by claiming that the media house was one of the few in India that can do “accountability reporting without fear of government censure.” However, his statement, which was intended to portray the Modi government as autocratic and was actually a resume, a loyalty affidavit and an ideological confession consolidated into one, appeared to have fallen on deaf ears.

His attempts to satisfy his liberal employee were subsequently aided by his emphasis on the bureau’s repeated attacks against the Modi government, accompanied by unfounded allegations aimed to discredit not only the ruling party but the entire nation.

Verma went on to proudly highlight several articles including those on Indian billionaires being “treated far better than others,” accusations of crony capitalism under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pieces about the nation’s corporations purportedly “fuelling Russia’s war in Ukraine” and the portrayal of India’s campaign to reduce illegal immigration as a “draconian deportation campaign of Muslims to Bangladesh.”

Each illustration was meant to reflect ideological conformity with the perspective that has progressively characterised The Washington Post’s international reporting especially in relation to India.

What is needed to become a journalist at the Washington Post

Verma made it abundantly clear what was required to be recruited as an Indian reporter at The Washington Post. The country which is presently governed by a “right-wing” government, already despised in liberal circles, should be painted as a dubious entity and its actions must be viewed through the lenses of tyranny, majoritarianism and moral delinquency rather than as a sovereign democracy confronting challenging issues.

Hence, Verma peddled a national security issue concerning illegal Rohingya immigration which involves falsified documents, border penetration and even criminal charges as a sorrow tale of communal persecution. Similarly, billionaires were presented as tools for government corruption rather than commercial players in a free market.

According to him, geopolitics does not serve as the origin of diplomatic strife, which is instigated by the personal and strategic ambitions of powers like the United States but is a “breakdown” resulting from India’s alleged moral failings. New Delhi is repeatedly vilified for its attempts to defend its sovereignty and the welfare of its people.

Verma was fundamentally gloating about the narrative his coverage disseminated and the detrimental effects his biased and inaccurate reporting has had on India over the years while leveraging it as a plank in hopes of keeping his job. It is indeed ironic that while he relentlessly attacked Indian billionaires and voiced concerns about censorship in India, he had to turn to an American mogul for work.

His arguments about freedom from power were contradicted by appeals to the generosity of the affluent owner but what defines a liberal if not blatant hypocrisy and double standards?

Meet Gerry Shih who is deeply committed to the cause of Khalistan separatism

The Washington Post stated that Gerry Shih, who attended Stanford University, became its part in 2018 and covered Israel, the Palestinian territories and the larger Middle East as the Jerusalem Bureau Chief. He previously “served as the New Delhi Bureau Chief from 2021-2025 and reported on politics, foreign policy, intelligence and technology in India and other South Asian countries.”

Gerry also covered China for the newspaper after “working for the Associated Press, Reuters and The New York Times. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2024 for his reporting on India and received the 2020 Osborn Elliott Prize.” He is reportedly of Chinese descent.

“He reported for the Associated Press from Beijing, where he covered the Chinese government crackdown in Xinjiang, domestic politics and foreign policy. He has also covered Silicon Valley’s social media companies for Reuters and Northern California for The New York Times,” informed The Media Rumble.

It is unnecessary to reiterate that being anti-India is not an oddity but rather a highly encouraged norm and requisite to join The Washington Post. Therefore, in line with this tradition, Gerry chose not only to use his pen to advocate for Khalistan separatists but also collaborated with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government in accusing India without any substantiation.

The collusion shattered the glass walls of journalistic integrity

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the government made grave but groundless allegations against India on 14th October 2024, contending that Indian agents, officials and senior Indian diplomats, including Sanjay Kumar Verma, who was India’s High Commissioner to the nation at the time had engaged in “criminal activities” on Canadian soil.

The newspaper produced a story written by Gerry and Greg Miller on the charges levelled by Canadian officials within hours and even declared Amit Shah as one of the conspirators in unlawful criminal operations. Canada’s National Security Advisor, Nathalie Drouin and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, David Morrison, were the government sources cited in the article.

However, it was already unveiled how the daily was briefed days before the RCMP and Canadian authorities accused India. It was merely waiting for a press conference before printing a prepared report. The assassination of terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar and other targeted killings as well as attacks on separatist elements were blamed on India. Canada’s NSA dictated these accusations to the media house long before any formal conclusions or evidence were made public.

The revelation adequately burst the bubble of the credibility of the newspaper’s independent journalism and integrity as its writers were discovered to be moonlighting as Ottawa’s instruments to demean New Delhi.

Unyielding attacks directed at India, promotion of conspiracy theories

Gerry, who had been using The Washington Post to accuse India of every “conceivable wrongdoing” from the withdrawal of “daring” content on Netflix and Amazon due to pressure from the Modi government to “hate speech” on Facebook to murders of terrorists in Pakistan spotted a golden opportunity to further the propaganda when the United States stated that India attempted to murder the banned “Sikhs For Justice” supremo, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in 2023.

Gerry insisted that Samant Kumar Goel, the former Chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), was completely involved in the conspiracy while conversing with Karan Thapar on the propaganda channel The Wire.

He first wrote, “US intelligence agencies have assessed that the operation targeting Pannun was approved by the R&AW Chief at the time, Samant Goel” in his article and later defended the statement as an “assessment from what we understand of US intelligence agencies,” in the 2024 interview.

Gerry eloborated, “Again, this was not sort of a one-off a rogue actor, that this had higher up approval from within the agency including from the secretary Goel, and if we also take into consideration what our sources have told us about the pressure that he was under pressure to eliminate these threats, that has contributed to this understanding that this was an operation.”

However, his “reporting” raised strong doubts in light of his complicity with the Canadian government and his consistent propensity to fabricate in his criticisms of India. Gerry has continuously illustrated his intellectual deceit as he did not even hesitate to equate India with China in 2022.

The Modi government decided to follow an independent foreign policy and did not cave to Western influence in the Russia-Ukraine War. However, he slammed the government for not aligning with the polity he favours and serves.

“Modi on same page as China on the issues of human rights, climate change, the treatment of religious minorities and freedom of expression, claims of Western hypocrisy emanating from Indian diplomats could well be coming from Chinese diplomats,” he mentioned while reacting to a column on anti-India The Caravan, authored by another member of the leftist lobby, Sushant Singh who is at Yale University.

“WP (The Washington Post) would love the absurdities in this article (meaning Sushant Singh’s article in The Caravan) coming from a kindred spirit targeting his own country with a Yale connection in mind. No one with an iota of intellectual honesty can bracket India and China on the issues mentioned. Shih expelled from China enjoying India’s freedom,” former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal had appropriately fired back at him.

Conclusion

The firings are the most recent in a string of buyouts and personnel reductions that have occurred throughout the media outlet’s offices in recent years due to criticism of certain editorial choices made by the publication which conveyed that it will not support a presidential candidate before the 2024 US presidential election, a stance taken by Bezos. Afterwards, it swiftly lost tens of thousands of subscribers.

Interestingly, the newspaper had backed a candidate in the majority of presidential elections since the 1970s and all of them were Democrats. Moreover, the decision made by Bezos to centre the paper’s opinion section on “personal liberties and free markets” last year led to the resignation of the division’s editor.

The company is notorious for its partial and politically motivated reporting and has a deep-rooted prejudice against India as well as profound resentment towards the Modi government which has only grown over time. Verma and Gerry also devoted their utmost efforts to penetrate this narrative and were foundational to this corrupt legacy.

However, the fresh development has once again brought attention to the internal issues of the firm and has proved that disparaging India specifically by the modern brown sepoys does not ensure job security within liberal media. They are all disposable, irrespective of their eagerness to launch unwarranted attacks on their country.