When I came here, I did not like American people. I thought they were aggressive too outspoken. They lack the kind of finesse that one noticed in Europe and one had to zero in on to the American psyche and understand that it is a No Nonsense no business psyche predominantly and now oh contraire. I feel extremely comfortable with Americans because you know, you're going to get it straight from the shoulder and you'll be told if it's good or bad or nice or not nice and it would be a perfectly truthful comfortable honest reply. So, you know where you stand with Americans most of the time and I'm very grateful for that Bruno. How about you have your attitudes either changed or stayed the same these past eight or nine months with regard to the American people in general and perhaps the American Media more specifically American Media. Oh well.Is it going with the American Media? I think at the beginning I was amazed of its capabilities and I was I was really surprised about all the hardware they have to work with and about dollar training journalists have but I think and I will continue to think that the median the US has failed in its Primary in its most important functions. Which I think are not only to educate but to not only to inform or to educate and to give a coherent picture of what's happening. I think that if people went if journalists went to Greyhound stations, they went to third class coffee joints in South Carolina, and they went to outside the steel mills in Pittsburgh, they would and talk to this people. They would realize how confused as people are how little informed they are. How messed up they have the image of the world and I think information is not only for those who have the access of making a choice of what to read of having receiving 15 Publications at home and of comparing what's happening, but I think information is for everybody and if you don't bring those people into it, if you don't interest them if you don't help help them and you don't educate them and you don't give them a coherent picture what's happening you're failing as a journalist. That's what I feel. My feelings are about us media and I'm sad to see that other countries are following the model in many ways. Can you be a little specific about say a particular issue where you think the American Media is failed since you've been here. In terms of educating as well as providing information. I meant this in a very very Global way because In this country, there's this myth of objectivity. and that there's a lot of things that makes people write in a way that's completely uncommitted completely detached and I think journalists have to be a have emotions and that journalist have Why not have the right to express those emotions when they're riding too but I think I need a very interesting issue would be the case of Iran. I think that could be a very interesting case because I think it's one of those International situations. In which particular political? Eames have blurred have lured the things that happened in the country. A lot of awful things have said about Iran but they don't say for example that since the Shah left 200 newspapers 200 newspapers are free to publish a free to say what they want. Nobody has talked about how much political activity there is in the country that didn't have any political activity that was completely suppressed. Nobody has talked about the the how people have gotten together to try and come out of this of this of this terrible hole. That's an interesting example and I want I remember there was. This documentary film in 60 Minutes on on the Chicano gangs in East Los Angeles. And was terrible because the the the the the image that they give you the Chicanos is very, you know, they're all trying to rob somebody and they're all trying to to you know, they're all the time killing people and you know all the negative cause you can find somebody they have it and the problem is they don't give an alternative image you have on one hand you have operative key shifts or on the other hand you have you know this information, you know. I think you could pick up many many many cases like that. So you'd like to see the American Media adopt a more educational tone as well as just providing a some so-called factual information. Yes, I think I think that's that's that's important. I think journalists they want if they want to not their guides and I think they should in every country. They should they should assume that that rule by do what about you and in terms of your observations of Americans and how they have handled both the situation in Iran and what's happened in the past six or seven months there and also Afghanistan, which is just a country away from your country. What kind of Stan has troubled me greatly because we have somehow in India. We have got involved with this whole thing. There's the fuhrer about 400 million dollars to xia and India and Pakistan are not exactly friendly, although mrs. Gandhi and Z have seemed to have sorted out their differences in Salisbury the other day. But you know, I wrote a paper on American television recently. And what I found was that commercial television is so much in the grip of the ratings that it has it has started intruding on the on the program content of television. And therefore it's brought television to be made it extremely mediocre in this country. You do have certain specific programs that that might be good. But I'm talking about the general kind of Television fair and this when you think that 75 percent of the American people get their information or their major source. News is television and for 50% of the people. The only source of news is television. It's very disturbing and I feel that people here are so bewildered and so overwhelmed by the events in Iran and Afghanistan. They've been caught in the wrong foot. They've been caught napping and that's because they were not filled in as to what was going on in these two countries. And the reason that's given is always or they're not interested, you know, the rating show that people don't watch information and news shows. So what you know, I mean you have to get through to 20 million 40 million. However many you can get hold of and and you say well this is a desert so I'm not going to try and irrigate it that that very famous Newton minow phrasing it try and irrigate A Wasteland, which he said was American television. I mean, I think I generally agree with their and and people that don't really know. That Afghanistan was a hot spot right in the beginning that it has not been an overnight Invasion by the Soviet Union. They did not know the that Des trouble was brewing in Iran for a long long time that resentment against America was growing so they fail to understand the anger of the people. They think it's just a small spot event, which is which it is not it's been fermenting over the last 25 years and you cannot wipe that clean. And once that kind of that kind of sore which has been festering for so long just bursts open. It has some very far-reaching consequences when we talked last September or October. It seems to me that one of the points that came up in our discussion in the studio had to do with the crisis orientation of the American Media and perhaps intern the American people that we seem somehow or another to go from crisis to crisis and Barely catch her breath in between and it sounds like you're saying that at least with regard to Afghanistan that perhaps most of the Indian people weren't quite as surprised or taken off guard As Americans were by the Soviet invasion and that that perhaps makes a difference in the way people in their governments react. Oh certainly, you know, we had paid attention to crowd was overthrown and I think that was in 72 or 71 and I'm not sure about that data actually, but even after that people have been following up in Afghanistan, we know they've had troubles trouble with their Rebels. We know that they've been supported by Pakistan. We know that that whole area is a very very high tension kind of area and so it doesn't surprise us. You see that's why mrs. Gandhi said when she made the so-called anti-American speech that time that everything has to be looked at in perspective. You cannot look at anything in a vacuum and and that was misunderstood and what she was trying to say was yes, we we say that the Soviet Union has committed an act of aggression, but there has been a history to it. So I do think we were less surprised in India then people here. Do you think that the United States overreacted? To an extent. Yes, although some of my journalistic colleagues from England James Cox yesterday said, you know England thought that Carter was so so engrossed in Iran and domestic affairs in the election year that he paid too little attention to Afghanistan that in there from their point of view of corner Stan and not Iran is the really dangerous portent for the Ares. Why do since we talked last year country has a new leader and as you alluded there have been some uneasiness on the part of some people in this country with regard to mrs. Gandhi's approach to World politics and just how closely she's going to align herself with communist countries, and I wonder if you just say a few things about her and about what we might expect to see from her that might put her in a different perspective from from Have some people's attitudes especially seeing her coming out of what looked like a battering and a sort of a Watergate of her own a year or two ago. Well, I think some people said to me what's wrong with the people of India, you know, they threw a rod and they brought it back again. What's happening to them? And I said that is the surest sign that democracy in India has come a wage. I don't really look upon. Mrs. Gandhi's re-election as a tragedy necessarily because I think the Indian people have now been able to say all right two years ago, you gave us emergency and you did this and that and then we threw you out with a very very convincing defeat you're completely smashed at the poles and then two years later. We had this other government. We tried it we tested it. It was no good. We threw them out. So remember we still got power five years later and I think that if anything is the only thing that's going to keep mrs. Gandhi in check because I do believe She has tendency to go towards unbridled power and authoritarianism and she really needs a definite of check. I only hope we are not in a gagged a hand and foot Again by the time the next election comes rolling by because if we are then we probably will not be able to do anything about it. But as far as foreign policy goes I have always liked mrs. Gandhi's way of handling things because you know, when you examine the doctrine of non-alignment non-alignment is not really respected by the two superpowers America are usually has taken up the stand and 71 really proved it with the Bangladesh war was that if you're not, you know, if you're not pro-america, you're automatically pro-soviet and they gave us no option at that time. They literally pushed us Kissinger did into the big bears arms. And since then we've been trying to move away a little bit back to the center. Where she thinks we should be and that if there is one field in which I come in. Mrs. Gandhi. It's in foreign policy. She is brilliant. She's a very good tactician. She's very good strategist. She knows what she wants and I don't doubt her her saying that I put India above everything else. I'm neither to the left nor to the right. I am for India, I'll do everything in her National interest because we need to fight for that right now. We cannot afford to be charitable. We have to be selfish. You know, we cannot say that we're going to do things for somebody else because they have X need or why need because our needs are so enormous at the moment. And as far as a domestic policies are concerned. I am very worried because they have been the incidence of the Blind Men. There was a hundred blind man who went to protest and ask for jobs and they were beaten up by the police. Even though there was even if one were to say that section 144 of the Indian Penal Code was in action at that time, which is a ban on unlawful assembly of more than five people you had to get a permit and these people had not got a permit. All right, the first thing the first attack was perhaps I don't think it is. But if one were to say it was excusable the second one certainly wasn't and when I did go back to India this time, there is a smell of authoritarianism in the air, you know, the police walks with a smarter gate and I don't like that at all. Bruno in the last 8 months has anything happened to make you feel any different about Americans attitudes towards your country towards Mexico. And then the people of Mexico when we talked last fall we talked about Mexico's Growing Power and its its ability to To make a better way for itself because of its oil resources in the fact that the United States was beginning at least to stand up and take notice of that. Have you learned anything that makes you feel as though the Americans are looking toward Mexico with a different attitude or has it not changed much? Well again here we have to I think we have to speak again of of the way information flows in the US. If you talk about the people in general, I feel that they are very, you know yet very distant formed about what what's what's what's going on in Mexico in what's Mexico again? They come out with cliches about Mexico and and you know the for that come bait back to 1910. They have them out till now and what what's been nice. I think it's I feel a warmth of people John possible towards Mexico. And that's very good to feel. So on one hand. We have, you know, again, very large number of persons that are not are not well informed. and on the other hand, we have an elite that's very well-informed extremely well informed when you go to Brookings Institute, when you go to the American Enterprise Institute, when you go to the Rand Corporation, when you go to any large corporation that has anything to do with Mexico, they have research going on and they had they they know a lot and what's being very interesting for me to see is how The whole ideological speech towards Mexico has changed as to other countries an example of this is the emergence of in the past five or six years of the concept of interdependence. And that word is used very much with Mexico. but before we weren't worth we weren't worth the term. Of interdependence. Why because in many ways I think the US was able to get the whatever whatever more less wanted. And now I think that's a little bit more difficult and the u.s. Looks at our resources, of course not so much for the u.s. You know, it's not that they want us to sell our world to the US for the u.s. Is not different that we sell our Market that will oral to the US or to the spot Market because if there's more oil in the in the World Market the us will have more oil but I think what's really interesting is this change in the way of talking to Mexico. They pat you on the back and it'll and now you have a lot of oil and and we like a lot your president and we like a lot what's happening. I understand the like my person by person has been very as kept everybody's expectations and through that he has helped businessman. He has helped a foreign capital. And he has helped by not just by not doing anything and just generating expectations. He has helped the whatever. Well I can see the wrong side. But largely, I don't think the the way people view Mexico has changed very much. What would change it? What would change it people's attitudes in this country? I think maybe we'll change it with something. Something happens in Mexico, they will shift the attention and really make them realize those people down there growing and those people have problems and those people are getting sophisticated something like what something that's at like suddenly realizing that Mexico is going tremendously to the left in a very quick fashion. And that that is going out of the USA's fear. That's kind of I see it. Very remote. But not impossible.