Claim: According to a screenshot of a tweet by Geo News’s official account, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb said, “People who cannot afford inflation should increase their income as it’s not the government’s job to run their houses.”
Fact: The quote is being wrongly attributed to the federal minister in posts shared online. The tweet carrying the claim was shared by a fake account that appears to be impersonating Geo News Urdu (@geonews_urdu).
Fact or Fiction?
On 8 June 2022, Facebook page PTI North Punjab shared a screenshot of a tweet allegedly by Geo News that attributes the following quote to Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Marriyum Aurangzeb:
“جو لوگ مہنگائی برداشت نہیں کر سکتے وہ محنت کریں اور اپنی آمدن بڑھائیں، حکومت کا کام لوگوں کے گھر چلانا نہیں ہے۔ مریم اورنگزیب [People who cannot bear inflation should work hard and increase their income, it’s not the government’s job to run people’s houses].”
The claim was picked up by multiple pages including, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here among others.
Soch Fact Check ascertained that the viral tweet was made by a fake account, Geo News Urdu (@geonewsudru), which was briefly renamed The Sharifia Index. The official account of Geo News Urdu (@geonews_urdu) is verified with 4.4 million followers.
A YouTube search was carried out with the search term “Marriyum Aurangzeb press conference” which revealed that the photo of the politician which appears in the viral screenshot is actually from a 6 June 2022 press conference. This is confirmed by the similarities between the image in question and other images of Aurangzeb at the 6 June press conference, such as the minister’s clothes and the logos on the mics which were placed on the table.
Soch Fact Check sifted through three clips of the aforementioned press conference uploaded by different channels, including Geo News, Dunya News and Samaa TV on YouTube but could not find any clip of Aurangzeb stating that people should work harder to increase their income if they cannot afford inflation.
At the 3:38 mark of the clip uploaded by Geo News, Aurangzeb can be heard talking about how Pakistan was not a poor country in 2018, but a developed country [while the PML-N was still in power]. The time stamp at this moment appears to be 14:34 PM, which corresponds to the timestamp of the screenshot doing the rounds on social media.
Hence, Soch Fact Check found the claim to be false.
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the 30-day period leading up to 16 June 2022 using the following search term:
- جو لوگ مہنگائی برداشت نہیں کر سکتے وہ محنت کریں اور اپنی آمدن بڑھائیں، حکومت کا کام لوگوں کے گھر چلانا نہیں ہے۔ مریم اورنگزیب [People who cannot bear inflation should work harder to increase their income, it’s not the government’s job to run their houses]
The search term turned up 4,574 interactions across 77 posts on Facebook.
The analysis revealed that the oldest relevant post dates back to 6 June.
The analysis revealed that PTI North Punjab’s post is performing nine times better than other similar posts, with 2,900 likes and 4,400 shares, followed by سنڌ سموري سونهن post which received 125 likes and 304 shares.
On Twitter, the claim was shared by columnist Raheeq Abbasi from his verified account. His tweet has received 1,989 retweets and 101 quote tweets.
It was also shared here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Conclusion: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb did not say that people should work hard to increase their income in light of inflation. . The tweet attributing this quote to her was shared by a fake Twitter account that appears to have been impersonating Geo News Urdu (@geonews_urdu).