Pranams. Jaya Srila Prabhupada! Religious studies academics are prone to the same weakness in relation to the religious institutions they examine as media organizations covering government. It becomes far too easy to trade objectivity for ease of access to official information. At worst the reporter or academic becomes “embedded” and more or less acts as the mouthpiece of the state or institution. The journalist I.F. Stone said, “All governments lie,” and religious institutions are not that different. The author of Branding Bhakti, Nicole Karapanagiotis, PhD., is also relatively young and therefore more dependent on previous scholarship on the ISKCON institution (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) which was founded in 1966.…