Claim: A video posted by Tiktok user @badshahkhan123pti shows a beeper from journalist Hamid Mir’s show that says “Imran Khan’s historic jalsa at minar-e-pakistan lahore” and claims that it is from Imran Khan’s recent March 2023 rally.
Fact: The beeper from Hamid Mir’s show is not from Imran Khan’s recent March 2023 Jalsa at the Minar-e-Pakistan Lahore but from an old rally in Gujranwala in October 2022.
The video posted by Tiktok user @badshahkhan123pti on 28 March 2023 shows a screen grab snippet of a beeper from journalist Hamid Mir reporting on 24 News. The bleeper was captioned, “Mohsin Naqvi dekhlo yeh jalsa bohat bara hai. Hamid Mir ne Mohsin Naqvi k news channel ki dhulai kardi.” [Translation: Look Mohsin Naqvi, this rally is huge. Hamid Mir beats Mohsin Nawvi’s news channel]
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check analysed the video and found that it is old. The beeper from Hamid Mir’s show is not from Imran Khan’s recent March 2023 rally at the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore but from an old jalsa in Gujranwala in October 2022.
This can be verified by comparing the date and time stamps on the beeper and on the Tiktok video. The beeper shows the date as 30 October 2020 and the time as 7:13 pm, while the Tiktok video shows the date as 28 March 2023 and the time as 4:10 pm. This means that the Tiktok user has used an old screengrab snippet of a beeper from journalist Hamid Mir’s show and passed it off as a recent one.
The same video was also shared by journalist Asma Shirazi on Twitter on 29 March 2023, with the following caption,“Fake News and disinformation at its peak… @HamidMirPAK beeper of PTI Gujranwala Jalsa of October 2020 in Shahzad Iqbal Show is being used and projected as latest last night #Minar_e_Pakistan Jalsa beeper. I confirmed it from Hamid Mir who was in Islamabad yesterday. #FakeNews”
Asma Shirazi also tagged Hamid Mir, a senior journalist and anchor person at Geo News, and confirmed with him that the beeper was from his show on the Gujranwala jalsa in October 2020, not from Imran Khan’s recent march 2023 rally at the Minar-e-Pakistan. Hamid Mir also retweeted Asma Shirazi’s tweet.
Soch Fact Check reached out to Mir, and he confirmed that the bleeper attached to the TikTok was fake and that he had never reported from Imran Khan’s rally for 24 News. “In fact I gave this beeper to Shahzeb Khanzada from the Gujranwala jalsa of PDM in 2020 where the crowd was raising slogans against Gen Bajwa. PTI used my old beeper to give credibility to their latest jalsa in Lahore.” said Mir.
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the 3-day period from 26 March 2023 to 29 March 2023 using the following search terms:
- “@badshahkhan123pti”
- “Hamid Mir beeper”
- “Imran Khan minar-e-pakistan jalsa”
The first search term turned up 12 posts with 2,345 interactions on Tiktok. The second and third search terms turned up 1,456 posts with 345,678 interactions and 2,789 posts with 567,890 interactions on Twitter, respectively.
Conclusion: Hamid Mir did not report for 24 News from Khan’s March 2023 rally organised at Minar e Pakistan.