In the last 15 years, ever heard any media house criticize Sonia Gandhi ? Even after the umpteen scams. That is what real power is.
Sure they make fun of Rahul Gandhi, but every few months articles and reinvention of his persona is done.
This is in contrast with the hounding of Modi from his CM days and nowadays where every tangential issue is attributed to him. Will Modi answer is like the Thanks Obama version of India.
Of course they did name Sonia Gandhi. Do you remember the India Against corruption movement which gave rise to AAP? The movement had posed questions to MMS and Sonia Gandhi and media had championed the movement. There was no equivocation about it from any mainstream channel, neither about the multiple scams that preceded it. Media houses had done their duty in speaking truth to power especially in UPA2 days.
What I am trying to say is your opinion about Modi's hounding in media seems to be built on what gets printed in wire/print/caravan etc. Although these sources might be heavily represented in your FB timefeed their influence/readership is miniscule compared to a news channel and news papers which have extremely lenient to Modi. Just think how hard media was on UPA2. That same level of scrutiny is sorely missing.
They claim emergency at a drop of a hat, the SC makes a lot of decisions unilaterally frequently crossing its constitutional mandate without accountability to anyone.
I would say that the media is doing a bad job of unearthing the actual facts and not being able to portray anything impartially without a political angle to it.
The fact remains that this govt has been cleaning the sins of the 2005-2013 years and initiatives like GST, demonetization even with their short term pains are a much needed antidote in the long term cleaning up of the system. There has been a significant jump in the tax collections from individual taxpayers in this year and last and these are changes that will contribute in the cleanup.