Pahalgam attack: Terror-washing by Western media has to stop

First Post

29-04-2025

Western media, especially the old newspapers and wire services, never forget to lecture Indians about higher values. They are good at engaging writers who will drive outrage traffic to their websites. This might be a business decision, but their racial bias emerges openly when they are reporting on actual events and try to mould the facts to sanitise even attacks by Muslim terrorists on Hindus.
The terrorist attack on April 22, 2025, in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, resulted in the tragic death of 26 tourists, most of them Hindus. Now go back and look at every news report filed by wire services like Reuters and see what they say. Every report tries to wipe out the identity of the tourist and frames the terrorists as a 'suspected militant'. It is important to understand adjectives like 'suspected' and how a single word can change the tone and tenor of the article. It creates a doubt in the reader's mind about whether the militant was one or just suspected to be one, but not yet verified.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
The word 'militant' is even more insidious in hiding identity; it implies someone who has a political grievance and has adopted an aggressive demeanour. Aggressive indeed, killing 23 Hindus, two Christians and a Muslim in cold blood is just that, a militant behaviour, not terrorism. Wire service reports are the basis for all copies, not just printed newspapers, but also for online and television versions. If they use the term 'suspected militants', every news outlet globally does the same. Terrorism is washed away by one word. This is a racial bias that has been ingrained in the style book of Western media for decades. Indian lives do not matter, attacks on Indians do not matter. Attacks on Hindus matter even less, so much less that the word Hindu victims is wiped out and will never be used in a Western publication. While the government today asked the BBC to specifically stop using the term militants for terrorists the real culprits are the wire services.
This religious, racial, and civilisational bias that the Western media outlets continue to perpetuate is not considered controversial or even discussed in their newsroom. By the way, the reporting in the wire service is done by Indians. And these Indians seem to have never objected to these biases being introduced in their copies or perpetuated by foreign editors. Even the journalist guild or press clubs have never bothered to highlight this apparent bias in reporting ever. The so-called Editors Guild of India, which is quick to object to everything and anything in India, has not even stated this continuous bias. The reports are filed from India, but the editing of such copies is finally done by an editor sitting in London or New York. Foreign wires do not trust Indians to edit the copy on their own.
The New York Times and The Washington Post consider themselves to be towers of journalism and are equally involved in perpetuating these biases over and over again. Every prominent Western media outlet predominantly labeled the assailants as 'militants', 'suspected militants', or 'gunmen'. Reuters described them as 'suspected militants', attributing the attack to a group known as the Kashmir Resistance, which itself was incorrect. The Washington Post referred to the terrorists as 'gunmen', as if they were some kind of bandits or armed burglars, not Islamic terrorists killing Hindus in cold blood. Of course, they did not report how they selected or identified the victims for the first few days, and never mentioned their identity as Hindus as if 1.5 billion Hindus do not exist at all.
The Washington Post noted that India attributed the attack to 'The Resistance Front', a banned organisation since 2023, but emphasised the absence of independently verifiable claims. As if the social media post by 'The Resistant Front' was made by the Indian government agencies.
BBC, as usual, always wants to give terrorist attacks their British journalism spin. Their coverage primarily framed the attack in terms of geopolitical tensions between India and Pakistan in the aftermath, situating the incident within a broader international relations context.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
The victims of the attack were predominantly identified in Western reports as 'tourists'. Initial articles from outlets like The Guardian and Reuters emphasised their status as tourists and avoided immediate reference to their Hindu identities. Some subsequent reports and survivor accounts detailed a disturbing dimension—terrorists explicitly targeted individuals based on their Hindu identity, demanding victims recite Islamic verses to distinguish non-Muslims. Despite these religious revelations, this aspect was underreported or omitted in many Western reports.
Reuters went two steps further and even assigned a rationale for the killings. Reuters assigned the responsibility for the attack as follows: 'India revoked Kashmir's special status in 2019, splitting the state into two federally administered territories - Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. The move allowed local authorities to issue domicile rights to outsiders, allowing them to get jobs and buy land in the territory. That led to a deterioration of ties with Pakistan, which also claims the region. The dispute has spurred bitter animosity and military conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours.'
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
A comparison with Western media coverage of similar terrorist attacks further highlights the bias. Attacks perpetrated by groups such as ISIS or Al-Qaeda in Western countries typically receive explicit labelling as 'terrorist attacks', with detailed analyses of ideological motives. The disparity in coverage standards is indicative of an underlying bias or reluctance to acknowledge the specific religious dimensions of terrorism affecting non-Western victims. The death of Western citizens by these terrorists is framed as an attack on civilisation and way of life, a similar attack in India is classified as a geopolitical incident.
Reports from wire services like Reuters and Bloomberg differ. Reuters detailed specific aspects of the attack, the Indian government's response, and the subsequent diplomatic fallout between India and Pakistan. Bloomberg described the incident explicitly as a 'terrorist attack', highlighting its economic and geopolitical implications. Subscribers to Reuters included Indian newspapers, which have been asking for action but are wary of taking action against this bias.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Western media's terror-washing of the Pahalgam attack is an inherent bias of these media outlets and cannot be condoned. Every reading Indian should write to remove these biases if Indian lives have to matter, and the global mindset about attacks on Indians has to change. This is not the government's job; this is the responsibility of every Indian online. Religiously motivated terrorism has to be recognised as such, and journalist standards need to be the same regardless of geographical location. Journalists are good at expressing rage against the government and asking the government to correct every wrong in society, but they are slow at correcting the biases in their profession.
K Yatish Rajawat is a public policy researcher and works at the Gurgaon-based think and do tank Centre for Innovation in Public Policy (CIPP). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD