Republic TV, Times Now Navbharat, Zee Hindustan, etc. use clip from a video game and put it across as evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in the war
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — As the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last month and the US and coalition forces withdrew from the war-torn country, the volatile situation has resulted in journalism becoming a casualty and consequently both social media and traditional news media are flooded with disinformation, fake news and propaganda.
Innumerable fake and predated claims are being revived, shared as fresh information and news and wrongly contextualised to the ongoing situation. Mainstream media has also fallen for the disinformation and, shockingly but not surprisingly, sections of Indian mainstream media are at the fore-front to peddle outright lies.
On Monday, August 6, when reports emerged that Taliban has also seized Panjshir province amidst unsubstantiated claims that Pakistani security forces were involved in attack on resistance forces, Republic TV, a news channel known for its brash and noisy reporting, put out a video report claiming they have exclusive footage of Pakistani jets flying and conducting strikes over Panjshir.
Other channels like Times Now Navbharat and Zee Hindustan also ran the same video to put it across as evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in Panjshir. The video was sourced from certain ‘Hasti TV’.
But Mohammad Zubair, journalist and co-founder of a fact-checking website, was quick to debunk the video. It was basically a video from a video game.
The story begins with a tweet from Faran Jeffery (@Natsecjeff), a man who claims to be an ‘Open source intelligence (OSINT) expert’. He put out the video clip captioned “EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE showing Pakistani drone attacking rebel targets in Panjshir”. But soon after he added another tweet clarifying that the clip was from a video game that was being passed off as proof of claims that Pakistani drones are attacking Panjshir by pro-resistance accounts.
Jeffery had been tracking the situation in Panjshir where Taliban and resistance front led by Ahmad Masood, son of late Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Masood, and vice president of the defunct Afghan government Amrallah Saleh. Jeffery has regularly been debunking and flagging misinformation being peddled on social media on the Afghanistan situation.
Republic TV used the clip of the video game ARMA 3. The video is available on YouTube and the channel used a part of it from 1:38 minutes. It pulled the video later after being called out.
Another TV channel TV9 Bharatvarsh used a different clip from ARMA 3 to make the same claim that they have evidence of Pakistani jets striking Panjshir.
Disinformation and fake news about Afghanistan is rife in the Indian media.
A fake Twitter account of Ahmad Massoud made a claim that the resistance forces had shot down a Pakistan F-16 Jet. The tweet was accompanied by a wrecked jet on the ground. Leading Hindi channel Aaj Tak from India Today group ran it as breaking news. Major Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar, too, believed in the fake claim and did a story on this.
Hi. I wanted to clarify that the account of Ahmad Massoud used in your report is fake. His real account is @AhmadMassoud01. The picture used is not a Pakistani jet in #panjshir, its a US jet in Arizona from 2018. I hope you will correct the report
Proof: https://t.co/zm9wichlXO
— Hamza Azhar Salam (@HamzaAzhrSalam) September 6, 2021
Hamza Azhar Salam replied to India Today on Twitter saying that the tweet behind the claim was posted by a fake handle. He added that this image was actually from 2018 and showed an American jet, not a Pakistani jet.
