Global media’s ‘eureka’ moment over Indian CDS remark reeks of wilful ignorance

New Delhi: In the age of clickbait diplomacy and hyperactive news cycles, truth has once again been lost in translation. This time courtesy of a statement made by India’s Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Anil Chauhan.

At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, a high-level security forum attended by defence ministers and military chiefs across the Indo-Pacific, General Chauhan said India had lost fighter jets during the May 2025 clashes with Pakistan. 

What followed was a chorus of international headlines treating this as a revelation, a ‘gotcha’ moment, as if the Indian military had for the first time admitted a secret truth.

Except, it wasn’t a revelation. Not even close.

Back home, the Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) had already acknowledged such losses in multiple briefings after Operation Sindoor. While the DGMO, in line with India’s doctrine of strategic restraint, had chosen not to spell out specific numbers, the admission of casualties and equipment loss was clear and unambiguous.

Yet, the global media and a section of media repeating Pakistani line, in its unrelenting appetite for drama, skipped the nuance and continued with its propaganda. 

Reports appeared to have gleefully recycled Pakistani military propaganda, all the while ignoring India's rebuttal that Pakistan’s claim of downing six jets was “absolutely incorrect”.

The general’s comments weren’t made in a vacuum. 

General Chauhan was addressing a regional security summit. His emphasis was on transparency, capability, and deterrence, not confession.

But such distinctions don’t sell headlines. And so, nuance was tossed aside.

India’s carefully calibrated communication around Operation Sindoor, including airstrikes on terror camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and several provinces of Pakistan and counter-offensives against drone and missile attacks, was never meant to be a PR exercise. 

It was a message to adversaries, not an audience for global commentators looking for sensationalism.

The real concern isn’t what Chauhan said. It’s how global newsrooms and Indian left lobby chose to report it, as if a senior Indian officer speaking on-record is somehow more incriminating than Pakistan’s habitual disinformation. 

There is something to be said about the selectiveness of outrage and the eagerness to frame narratives when it comes to India.

But that is perhaps the world we live in: where what’s already known can be ‘breaking news’, if it fits a certain frame.