Another Hit Job Falls Flat: Washington Post's Credibility Crisis in India

Once celebrated as a global symbol of fearless journalism, the Washington Post today faces serious questions about its credibility in India. The paper that once exposed Watergate now finds itself accused of bias and factual weakness whenever it reports on India's economic rise.

Its October 2025 article, "India's $3.9 billion plan to help Modi's mogul ally after US charges," claimed that the Indian government, Finance Ministry, and LIC collaborated to channel Rs 33,000 crore into Adani Group companies. Yet the story cited anonymous sources and partial documents - without verifiable proof.

The government, LIC, and Adani Group immediately dismissed it as false and misleading. LIC clarified that its Adani holdings form less than 1 per cent of its portfolio and have yielded more than 120 per cent gains. Indian media dubbed it another "hit job," recalling the timing and tone of the 2023 Hindenburg report.

Social media sentiment was overwhelmingly negative, with hashtags like #FakeNewsWaPo trending widely. People questioned whether The Washington Post had become an instrument of geopolitical narrative-setting rather than independent journalism.

This skepticism isn't unfounded. The paper has a record of recent corrections and retractions that dent its image:

• In June 2025, it retracted portions of a Gaza report after wrongly attributing civilian deaths to Israeli troops.
• In July 2025, it apologised to India's TV9 Bharatvarsh for false attributions in a Pakistan-related story.
• In 2019, a feature on Black families' farmland required 15 major corrections - one of the most embarrassing in its history.
• In March 2021, a Trump story was corrected after leaked audio disproved key quotes.
• In November 2021, two Steele Dossier stories were amended and partly deleted for relying on unreliable sources.

Against this backdrop, Indians now view such reports with deep suspicion. They see them not as journalism, but as attempts to shape global opinion against India's growth story. In a country where people increasingly fact-check news themselves, The Washington Post's latest story became a case study in lost credibility - a foreign paper struggling to understand a confident new India.

(Disclaimer: New Delhi Television is a subsidiary of AMG Media Networks Limited, an Adani Group Company.)