The U.S. State Department is looking to design and facilitate a media ethics course for journalists in India, and has even proposed appropriating the name of Robin Thicke’s 2013 hit “Blurred Lines” as a title for the course. The U.S. consulate general in Hyderabad, India is looking for a non-profit to co-develop the course to help Indian journalists gain a “baseline understanding of the international industry standards,” including “accuracy, honesty, transparency, impartiality, and accountability,” and is willing to spend $20,000 – $25,000 on it.

The grant documents note that credibility is a key part of journalists’ jobs to “keep their readership informed, hold us all accountable, filter fact from fiction, and unmask false narratives masquerading as truth.” To that end, the State Department would like a full-time faculty member to propose curriculum content and develop a syllabus tailored to communicate journalistic standards to an Indian university audience. Additionally, the grant calls for a “U.S.-based, university-level journalism professor,” suggested by the non-profit subject to approval by the State Department, to act as consultant in the development of the course.