Demonstrators hold placards with the picture of journalist Gauri Lankesh in New Delhi on Thursday. Lankesh was shot dead on September 5. Pic/PTI

One of the many WhatsApp forwards doing the rounds following the Gauri Lankesh murder is a spreadsheet — that theatrical costume of dispassionate objectivity — which lists various national English language journalists seen as liberal or left-liberal, and lists a numerical comparison of how many tweets of outrage and solidarity they wrote on Gauri Lankesh's murder (several) versus when journalists writing exclusively in a regional language were similarly killed (zero). This table, like some news, uses factuality to signal objectivity, while its ideology is exercised through the selection of (alleged) facts. For instance, it does not list other national media English or Hindi language journalists who are more allied with right/right of centre perspectives and what solidarities they expressed with regional journalists.