From the fall of Islamabad to an attack on Karachi: 5 fake stories that Indian TV news ran with
On Thursday night, as the Pakistani military launched several attacks along India’s western border, news channels in the country led the charge with a barrage of unverified and often outrageously false information.
In line with their jingoistic coverage of India’s response to the Pahalgam terror attack, most channels and their social media handles not just claimed victory for the Indian armed forces but also the destruction of Pakistani cities and its defence establishment.
Many of these claims were made on air, sometimes citing unidentified sources and sometimes without.
Scroll lists some of the more outlandish stories from this stream of misinformation.
1. ‘Army chief Asif Munir arrested’
Early in the morning on May 9, Zee News published a story claiming that “reports” had emerged that Pakistani army chief Asif Munir had been “taken into custody by Pakistani authorities” because he had been working on “his personal agenda”.
Not only that, several channels of the network claimed that “General Sahir Shamshad Mirza was being considered as Munir’s possible replacement”.
Zee News was not alone. The ABP news channel reported that the Pakistan army chief had been arrested, citing unidentified sources. “Asim Munir ko hirasat mei liya gaya,” read the caption of its YouTube channel, which has still not been edited. Both Thanthi TV, a Tamil news channel, and...
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