Western Media’s India Bashing: Same Old Bias, New Terror Excuses
By Gajanan Khergamker
Several foreign media outlets have described India’s strikes as a unilateral escalation, often emphasising civilian casualties in Pakistan while sidelining the catalyst: the April 22, 2025, terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, which killed 26 tourists, mostly Hindu men. For instance, The New York Times reported that India “struck Pakistan” in response to the attack, framing the operation as an act of aggression without adequately acknowledging India’s claim that the strikes targeted “terrorist infrastructure” linked to groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Similarly, CNN noted Pakistan’s claim of civilian deaths, including children, but gave less weight to India’s assertion that the strikes were “focused and precise,” targeting only terror camps.
This selective framing mirrors historical patterns. During the 2019 Balakot airstrike, following the Pulwama attack that killed 40 Indian paramilitary personnel, outlets like BBC and Al Jazeera questioned the efficacy of India’s strikes, highlighting Pakistan’s narrative that no significant damage occurred while downplaying India’s evidence of targeting JeM facilities. The BBC’s 2019 coverage of Balakot leaned heavily on Pakistan’s guided tour of the site, which showed an intact madrasa, without sufficiently questioning why Pakistan delayed media access for 43 days, potentially to sanitise the site. This pattern of amplifying Pakistan’s denials while scrutinising India’s claims suggests a bias that prioritises skepticism toward India’s actions over Pakistan’s complicity in harboring militants.
A recurring issue in foreign media coverage is the reluctance to emphasise Pakistan’s long-standing support for terrorist groups operating in Kashmir. India has consistently accused Pakistan of providing safe havens to groups like JeM and LeT, a charge supported by international bodies. For example, the United Nations designated JeM’s founder, Masood Azhar, as a global terrorist in 2019, yet media reports rarely delve into Pakistan’s failure to act against such figures. In the current crisis, Reuters and NBC News reported Pakistan’s denial of involvement in the Pahalgam attack but did not adequately explore India’s evidence of “clear involvement of Pakistan-based terrorists.”
Historically, this omission aligns with coverage of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, where LeT operatives killed 166 people. While India provided evidence of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) links to the attackers, Western media outlets like The Guardian and The Washington Post initially framed the incident as a bilateral issue, avoiding strong condemnation of Pakistan’s role until international pressure mounted. This tendency to equivocate reflects a broader bias, possibly driven by Western geopolitical interests in maintaining Pakistan as a strategic ally, particularly during the Cold War and post-9/11 eras when Pakistan was a key partner in Afghanistan
Posts on X have accused outlets like BBC, CNN, and RT of biased reporting that favors India’s narrative, but the opposite is often true in Western coverage. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has noted that Western media often adopt a “narrow nationalism” when covering India-Pakistan conflicts, framing India as the aggressor to align with liberal critiques of its Hindu-nationalist government under Narendra Modi. This was evident in 2019 when The New York Times editorialised that India’s revocation of Kashmir’s autonomy was “dangerous and wrong,” predicting “certain bloodshed” without acknowledging Pakistan’s role in fueling insurgency. Such coverage often ignores the complexities of Kashmir’s history, including Pakistan’s invasion of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947, which triggered the first Indo-Pak war and set the stage for the ongoing dispute.
The bias is further compounded by a lack of on-ground reporting. Western outlets rely heavily on stringers or secondary sources in Pakistan, where access to conflict zones is tightly controlled. During the 2019 Balakot crisis, Reuters journalists were barred from accessing the strike site independently, yet their reports leaned on Pakistan’s narrative of minimal damage. This contrasts with Indian media, which, while accused of jingoism, often provide detailed accounts of militant activities based on local intelligence, though these are dismissed as state propaganda by Western outlets.
The bias in foreign media coverage can be traced to historical Western attitudes toward India and Pakistan. During the Cold War, the United States and United Kingdom viewed Pakistan as a bulwark against Soviet influence, supplying it with arms and overlooking its support for militancy. India, with its non-aligned stance and socialist leanings under leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, was often portrayed as uncooperative or pro-Soviet. This legacy persists in media narratives that subtly favor Pakistan as a strategic asset. For instance, during the 1965 Indo-Pak war, Western media largely framed India’s defensive actions as escalatory, ignoring Pakistan’s attempt to seize Kashmir by force.
Similarly, the 1999 Kargil conflict saw Western outlets like The Times (UK) focus on India’s military response while underreporting Pakistan’s infiltration of the Line of Control (LoC), which sparked the conflict. This historical tendency to downplay Pakistan’s provocations while scrutinising India’s responses is evident in the current crisis, where outlets like BBC highlight Pakistan’s call for a “neutral investigation” into the Pahalgam attack without questioning why Pakistan has not dismantled known terror networks.
The bias in foreign media coverage is not merely a matter of narrative framing; it has real-world implications. By emphasisng civilian casualties in Pakistan without verifying claims—such as Pakistan’s unconfirmed assertion of shooting down five Indian jets—media outlets risk amplifying disinformation. This echoes the 2019 Balakot crisis, where satellite analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found no evidence of significant damage, yet Indian claims of destroying militant camps were dismissed without equal scrutiny of Pakistan’s narrative.
Moreover, the media’s focus on India’s actions as escalatory ignores the broader context of nuclear restraint. Both India and Pakistan have historically avoided full-scale war due to their nuclear capabilities, a dynamic that forces calibrated responses. India’s 2016 surgical strikes and 2019 airstrikes were limited in scope to avoid provoking Pakistan’s nuclear threshold, yet Western media rarely acknowledge this restraint, instead portraying India as reckless.
The foreign media’s coverage of India’s strikes on Pakistan reveals a pattern of bias rooted in selective framing, omission of Pakistan’s role in terrorism, and a historical Western tilt toward Pakistan as a geopolitical ally. Outlets like The New York Times, Reuters, BBC, and CNs have often failed to provide balanced context, echoing narratives seen in past conflicts like Balakot, Mumbai, and Kargil. This bias not only distorts public understanding but also undermines efforts to address the root causes of India-Pakistan tensions, particularly Pakistan’s support for militancy. To achieve fairer reporting, foreign media must prioritise on-ground verification, engage with India’s evidence of terrorist activity, and critically examine their own geopolitical assumptions. Until then, their coverage risks perpetuating a skewed narrative that inflames tensions rather than clarifying them!
