How Bloomberg, Reuters, NYT and others have been running non-stop Pakistani and Chinese propaganda without a shred of evidence, but a loop of lies from dubious sources
When you cannot win militarily, run propaganda so robust that would make the world believe your lies, defying all facts, evidence and logic with impunity. Pakistan suffered startling damages and killing of numerous terrorists, and personnel due to India’s Operation Sindoor which targeted terrorist camps and military infrastructure inside Pakistan. However, the hostile neighbour living up to its reputation of dressing falsehoods as facts to hide its failures has found allies in the international left-leaning media to amplify its lies.
In this vein, Bloomberg published an article on 13th May, headlined: “Chinese Weapons Gain Credibility After Pakistan-India Conflict”, wherein the propaganda outlet amplified Pakistan’s claims of shooting down five Indian fighter jets including Rafale. It, however, failed to provide any evidence for these audacious claims.
“Pakistan hailed the use of its Chinese J-10Cs to shoot down five Indian fighters, including French-made Rafale aircraft, last week in response to Indian military strikes. Although the reports haven’t been confirmed, and India hasn’t commented, the jet’s maker saw its market capitalization soar by over 55 billion yuan ($7.6 billion), or more than a fourth, by the end of last week,” the Bloomberg piece reads.
While Bloomberg pushing anti-India narrative is not surprising as OpIndia has on numerous occasions exposed Bloomberg’s bias, this propaganda piece heaping praises on Chinese defence system based on Pakistani lies is penned by two Chinese authors Josh Xiao and Yian Lee.
As Indians started calling out Bloomberg and raising questions over its credibility, Bloomberg quietly mentioned one Sudhi Ranjan Sen as one of the authors alongside the Chinese duo. This, apparently, was done to use their brown sepoy to lend credence to the blatant Chinese propaganda. Sen’s name was inserted later, and the archived version of the Bloomberg piece shows only Josh Xiao and Yian Lee as the authors of the article in question.
Indian social media users have been calling out the shameless propaganda by Bloomberg.
Lauding the fictional success of Chinese J-10Cs, the Bloomberg piece suggested that Chinese weapons may have attained or even surpassed the levels of US air defence systems. The article also suggested that Taiwan should be “very scared” after the so-called success of Chinese defence systems used by Pakistan. It also hailed Chinese air-to-air PL-15 missiles fired by Pakistan, even though Indian air defence shot down the Chinese missile proving India’s defence capabilities.
Not just that, Pakistan’s China-made air defence system was reduced to a joke by India all through Operation Sindoor, because India not only pounded terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan, but India’s retaliatory drone and missile strikes hit Pakistani air bases, and radars without much hindrance. And these are facts backed by satellite imagery, not random claims by unknown sources and social media rumors.
However, for China and its media stooges, PL-15 being shot down by India and failing to cause any significant damage is success. After allying with Pakistan, China too has become shameless in running face-saving PR campaigns, although it has always been a master of Goebbelsian propaganda.
New York Times admits India’s success of Operation Sindoor, though not without downplaying it
The New York Times, another left-leaning media outlet earlier amplified Pakistani lies of having shot down five Indian warplanes, including three Rafale fighter jets, one MIG-29 fighter aircraft, and one Su-30 fighter jet. While Pakistan has failed to provide any substantial proof, including visuals of the wreckage of the supposedly downed Indian fighter jets, NYT decided to take ‘expert’ opinion of John E Pike, the director of Global Security, who speculated that those five aircraft and the drone could have been downed by surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles. Because “Pakistan has both”. There was no evidence to back Pakistan’s claims, zero visuals despite the flood of visuals of India’s successful target hits inside Pakistan, but the New York Times went with a baseless claim anyway.
However, as India published satellite imagery, elaborate and undeniable evidence of the damage inflicted on Pakistani terror and military establishments in the precision strikes conducted under Operation Sindoor, NYT changed tunes though not without downplaying Indian success.
In an article published on 14th May, headlined: “India and Pakistan Talked Big, But Satellite Imagery Shows Limited Damage”, The New York Times said that while both India and Pakistan used hundreds of drones and missiles to test each other’s air defenses and deliver hits on military facilities, India inflicted the maximum damage on Pakistani facilities.
“But an examination of satellite imagery indicates that while the attacks were widespread, the damage was far more contained than claimed — and mostly inflicted by India on Pakistani facilities,” the NYT reported.
While NYT choosing to publish facts over pro-Pakistan propaganda came as a surprise to many, the newspaper did not disappoint those aware of its anti-India biases. The NYT report amplified Pakistani claims of having shot Indian fighter jets saying that officials and diplomats say that at least two Indian jets were downed. NYT should answer, which officials and diplomats? Pakistani? Well, one can judge the credibility of Pakistani claims from the fact that when asked for proof of downing Indian fighter jets, Pakistani Defence Minister Khwaja Asif said: “It’s all over the social media”.
Source: Maxar and Planet Labs
However, the New York Times report analyses satellite imagery of military infrastructure targeted by both India and Pakistan, and it emerges that Pakistan failed to cause any significant damage, while India successfully damaged runways of Rahim Yar Khan airbase, Nur Khan airbase, as well as Sargodha airbase.
Udhampur airbase, with no significant damage (Source: Satellite image by Planet Labs/NYT)
France24 transforms into China’s PR as Chinese weaponry fails to protect Pakistan against India’s Operation Sindoor
While media’s job is to report facts and analysis, France24 prefers declaring one-sided verdicts and coming across as a PR agency of a country in serious need of false praises to coverup failures. Amplifying Pakistan’s false claims of downing Indian Rafale fighter jets, France24 asserted that Pakistan giving a ‘robust response’ to India’s attacks, with Chinese J-10 fighter jets is a ‘victory for China in terms of perception’. France24, like many other western news outlet interpreted India’s refusal to either confirm or deny loss of fighter jets as inadvertent lending of credence to Pakistani-Chinese claims. However, India’s silence was due to the fact that Operation Sindoor was not over.
The article further does a PR job for the CCP, Presient Xi Jinping, his leadership in modernising Chinese defences. France24 cited Chinese or pro-China ‘experts’ to establish an apocryphal narrative that somehow Indian defences are not as effective as compared to the Chinese, even though India rendered Chinese defence systems in Pakistan defunct for a limited time period during the strikes and destroyed China’s carefully crafted image of ‘invincibility’.
Reuters claimed Pakistan downed Indian fighter jets citing ‘Pakistani sources’
On 7th May, Reuters put out a report with the headline, “Three fighter jets crashed in India’s Jammu and Kashmir, local govt sources say”. In this article, Reuters cited ‘local sources’ to claim that three Indian fighter jets crashed in India’s Jammu and Kashmir territory. The news outlet quoted a Pakistani military spokesperson who claimed that PAF shot down Indian fighter jets.
Similarly, on 9th May, Reuters decided to recycle the Pakistani falsehoods of downing Indian fighter jets. Reuters claimed that two US officials told the publication on the condition of anonymity that Pakistan used Chinese fighter jets to shoot down two Indian military aircrafts. Which US officials? Why this anonymity? It is evident that the western media is complicit in pushing pro-China and pro-Pakistan narrative despite facts and evidence being on the favour of India. An interesting thing to note about this Reuters report headlined: Pakistan’s Chinese-made jet brought down two Indian fighter aircraft, US officials say, is authored by Idrees Ali and Saeed Shah, both journalists from Pakistan. Too much for the credibility, isn’t it.
You see, Pakistan claims it shot six Indian fighters, Reuters goes from three to two, Frane24 claims 3 and CNN on 7th May cited Pakistani ‘military sources’ to claim that PAF shot down five Indian fighter jets. CNN also claimed that Indian aircraft had crashed in Jammu and Kashmir despite it being clear from the visuals themselves that the wreckage was not that of fighter jets but of a drop tank. All these foreign news outlets created a warp and weft of lies and propaganda based on what? Pakistani and Chinese sources.
Al-Jazeera peddling debunked lies about Indian fighter jets
Al-Jazeera, the Qatari Islamist propaganda outlet cited CNN report to claim that two Indian jets crashed including one Rafale, although CNN had cited Pakistani military sources, which unsurprisingly failed to provide any proof. “Photos taken by AP news agency photo journalists showed debris of an aircraft in the Pulwama district in Indian-administered Kashmir,” Al-Jazeera reported ignoring the fact that photos in question showed that the object that crashed onto the ground is actually an external fuel tank, not a fighter jet. Basically, it is media outlets citing each other as source and treating Pakistan’s claims as facts without any evidence.
Beyond propaganda, what neutral defence experts said about India’s Operation Sindoor?
John Spencer, a military veteran and the head of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute in New York, has called India’s Operation Sindoor a decisive victory. In multiple social media posts and his popular podcast, Spencer has said, “After just four days of calibrated military action, it is objectively conclusive: India achieved a massive victory.”
In a detailed article shared on X, Spencer wrote, “Operation Sindoor met and exceeded its strategic aims—destroying terrorist infrastructure, demonstrating military superiority, restoring deterrence, and unveiling a new national security doctrine. This was not symbolic force. It was decisive power, clearly applied.”
Spencer’s article mentions the Pahalgam attack on April 22, and adds, “unlike previous attacks, this time India didn’t wait. It didn’t appeal for international mediation or issue a diplomatic demarche. It launched warplanes.”
Calling Operation Sindoor a swift and precisely calibrated military campaign, Spencer added, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the new doctrine unmistakable: “India will not tolerate any nuclear blackmail. India will strike precisely and decisively at the terrorist hideouts developing under the cover of nuclear blackmail.”
A review of over 24 satellite images and aftermath videos found that the strikes heavily damaged three hangars, two runways and a pair of mobile buildings used by the air force. Some of the sites that were hit by India were as deep as 100 miles inside Pakistan.
Walter Ladwig, a senior lecturer in international relations at King’s College London and an expert in South Asian security issues, told the Washington Post that the strikes marked “the most extensive Indian air attacks on Pakistani military infrastructure since the 1971 war.”
William Goodhind, a geospatial analyst at Contested Ground, a research project that uses satellite imagery to track armed conflict, said “high-profile targets were hit in precision strikes with the aim of severely degrading Pakistan ‘s offensive and defensive air capabilities,” The Washington Post reported.
Christopher Clary, an associate professor at the University at Albany and author of a book on the India-Pakistan rivalry, told the Post, “The satellite evidence is consistent with the claim that the Indian military inflicted meaningful — though in my view not devastating — damage on the Pakistan air force at a number of bases across eastern Pakistan. After reviewing satellite imagery, Goodhind said that two mobile control centres were destroyed at Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi just outside Islamabad. Video from a nearby parking lot showed smoke billowing from the damaged site. The Nur Khan air base, one of the most important in Pakistan is in close proximity to the Strategic Plans Division, the unit responsible for safeguarding the country’s 170 nuclear warheads, stored in facilities across Pakistan.
Clearly, while Pakistani ‘Aand Forces’ have provided nothing but communally charged rhetoric and ‘centre of gravity’ gobbledygook, India on the contrary, has provided satellite imagery, proper before-after impact visuals and technical details of Operation Sindoor. While the pro-Pakistan propaganda machinery may have initially managed to take the world for a ride, the eventually is coming out and establishing the fact India inflicted damages to Pakistani terror and military infrastructure beyond the imagination of Pakistani military and political establishment.
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