Claim: A Twitter account posting in favour of Imran Khan claims to be the royal correspondent of the United Kingdom’s newspaper, the Daily Express.
Fact: The account is an imposter. The official royal correspondent of the Daily Express is Richard Palmer, and he has not posted anything in support of Imran Khan.
On 18 December 2022, a Twitter user going by the name James Williams posted a picture collage comparing Imran Khan and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari meeting foreign delegations with the caption, “Dear Pakistanis! Choose your Leader Wisely.”
The caption refers to the body language of both politicians in the photos.
The account of James Williams also features appreciative posts for former PM and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan. The account bio reads, “I’m the royal correspondent of the Daily Express in London. Views expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employees naturally.”
Fact or Fiction?
James Williams’s tweet was retweeted by Pakistani journalists Mooed Pirzada and Sami Abraham, along with many users who believed the tweet was written by the Daily Express.
Soch Fact Check conducted a keyword search on Google and found that James Williams is not the royal correspondent of Daily Express, UK. The search showed a news article published by Daily Express on 12 April 2022.
The sub-headline of the story reads, “If you’re interested in the latest news from Britain’s best-known family, our Royal Correspondent Richard Palmer is back for another roundup episode to discuss the latest news on Queen, Charles and Harry.”
The article then links to a Twitter account with the name Richard Palmer (@royalreporter). The verified account also has similar bio which reads, “I’m the royal correspondent of the Daily Express in London. Views expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employers, naturally.”
On Palmer’s account, Soch Fact Check found many news articles and stories written by him for the Daily Express and other media outlets as the royal correspondent of the daily newspaper. He has not posted anything about Pakistan’s internal political affairs.
However, no results linking James Williams to the Daily Express could be found. Reverse image searches of the profile picture of the Twitter account did not yield any results either.
Soch Fact Check tried reaching out to the Daily Express but could not receive a response by the time of publication.
Virality
An organic search on Facebook showed that people quoted the imposter account here, here, here, here, here and here.
On Twitter, the account has 20,000 followers and his tweet received 1 million views, 9,886 retweets and 433 quote tweets.
Conclusion: The royal correspondent of the UK’s Daily Express did not tweet in favour of Imran Khan. The account claiming to be associated with the organisation is an imposter account.