Two lies the Western media is comfortable with.
Why have the media in the West reported highly skewed report about Balakot bombing? Not only that they produced highly unbelievable reports of a highly sophisticated F-16 being shot down by an unsophisticated MIG-21.
I believe in the first case, Lutyen Delhi’s politically biased media barons found that with federal elections shortly, the Pulwama bombing by Pakistani trained terrorists have offered Modi an unfair advantage. His angry reaction and retaliation shifted the public opinion in favor of Modi and BJP. This they thought will give Modi not only a clear majority, but probably two third majority in the upcoming elections. The Delhi based media correspondents of British and American press, who mostly are in touch with Indian Lutyen media barons in Delhi picked up the storyline from them. They en mass are the pro Congress Party and Anti Modi & BJP. In spite of major public outpouring of patriotism in India, the Indian media barons decided to find faults with IAF’s action by asking for proof of the bombing. That was the Congress Party official line. Previously they had a partial success after URI bombing in 2016. Although the public believed everything which the Army said happened in 2016, yet the Congress Party asked for proof. In this case again Pakistan came to their rescue and denied anything happened. The Congress Party for their political reasons chose to believe the Pakistani version. Even today in 2019, Pakistani denied that anything serious happened at Balakot, they even denied that immediately after midnight on the 24th of February anything of significance happened in the living quarters of terrorists and their trainers, except a few trees were bombed. Fifteen days later they were prohibiting any Indian and Western media correspondents to visit these living quarters. It is only that if they report real damage and casualties then Congress Party and the Western media will be proven to be biased.
As to the regard to the air clash over the LOC in Kashmir two days later in which one F-16 and one MIG-21 was shot down, the Western media chose to believe the Pakistani version of no F-16 shot down, although they admitted that the locals beat up the F-16 pilot so much that he died later. The Western media, which believes that western military hardware’s superiority that they could not believe that an inferior MIG-21 can shoot down a sophisticated F-16. But it did happen and any admittance of this major catastrophe for them would jeopardize billions of dollar sales of this major US export. Hence, they chose to go with the Pakistani line that only MIG -21 was shot down and F-16 was not in the fight. They backtracked a bit after part of the AMRAAM missile fired by the F-16 were found. Now Americans are a bit sheepish to admit that a F-16 has been shot down. Moreover the MIG-21 which India flew is not what was purchased in 1963 but a highly upgraded version which is an equal match to F-16.
The Western media has gone wrong in both these incidents. Now they do not know how to correct their lies where as in the first case they chose to believe the anti Modi version of Lutyen Delhi and in the second case again chose to believe the Pakistani version.