Claim: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin refused to meet Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2022. Fact: There is no truth to the claims as Vladimir Putin and Shehbaz Sharif met on the sidelines of the SCO Summit 2022 on 15 September 2022. Photos and videos from the two leaders’ […]
Claims: A viral social media post claims that a man killed and beheaded his daughter in Karachi. Fact: The incident took place in Meerut, India not Pakistan. Further, images of a man and a young girl being shared with the claim are unrelated to this case. On 26 August 2022, a Facebook post went viral […]
Claim: Imran Khan pleads for Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Jawed Bajwa’s tenure extension in his interview with journalist Kamran Khan on Dunya News. Fact: Imran Khan did not plead for General Bajwa’s tenure extension. On 12 September 2022, Former Prime Minister Imran Khan appeared in ‘Dunya Kamran Khan Kay Saath’, a talk […]
Claim: A photo apparently shows Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites visible in the sky from Pakistan. Fact: The image is, in fact, two years old and has no link to Pakistan. It was taken as a screenshot from a video posted by a Kosovo-based software developer. On 8 September 2022, Facebook user Umar Farooq posted in […]
Claim: A graph shared in a viral tweet shows the rate of inflation in Pakistan along with the level of media outcry about inflation under the PTI government vs the PDM government. It claims that the media disproportionately created an outcry about inflation under the PTI government, as compared to the growing inflation under PDM […]
Claim: A screenshot shows a tweet by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in which he says, “I am surprised that on the visit to Pakistan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan wanted me to have a media talk of his choice. I saw there that the Pakistani authorities do not care about the people.” Fact: Antonio […]
Claim: A picture of a minor girl is shared with a caption that implies she is an affectee of the recent devastating floods in Pakistan. Fact: The child is a Rohingya refugee, who was photographed by Paula Bronstein on 29 October 2017. On 25 August 2022, Pakistani actress and model Neelam Muneer Khan posted on […]
Claim: According to British journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer, extreme weather events are not increasing worldwide Fact: Extreme weather events are increasing across the globe, especially in North America, Europe and Asia, according to the Summary for Policymakers report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). On 2 September 2022, Talk TV, a recently launched British […]
Claim: A photo shows a man salvaging his belongings from his home flooded by rainwater during the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Fact: The image is actually from the 2011 floods in Sindh and shows a man retrieving his belongings from his flooded home in Karachi, Pakistan. Photographer Fareed Khan took the picture on 13 September […]
Claim: A video of a mob attacking and forcibly entering the house of a Hindu family is being shared on social media with captions that claim the incident took place in the Telangana region of India. Fact: The claim is misleading. The incident did not take place in India but in Hyderabad, Pakistan, where a […]
Claim: Multiple social media reports claim that Junaid Safdar, the grandson of Pakistan’s former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, was arrested in London over either a fake degree or involvement in a stolen Bentley Mulsanne case. Fact: The video is over four years old and shows Junaid Safdar being detained following a physical altercation in London […]
Claim: A video shows darkness suddenly engulfing a market in Dera Ismail Khan, making people run and drivers turn on their headlights. Fact: The video is, in fact, not from the summer 2022 monsoon season in Pakistan, nor is it from Dera Ismail Khan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but Balochistan. It was originally uploaded online in March […]