Post by Dan Diamond / Redsky

Dan Diamond • Feed

A sign of things to come? In clash between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India last month, misinformation ran wild across the region’s major networks, fueled by WhatsApp, social media, and misleading edits, @karishma-m.bsky.social and colleagues report.

NEW DELHI - Shortly after midnight on May 9, an Indian journalist received a WhatsApp message from Prasar Bharati, the state-owned public broadcaster. Pakistan's army chief had been arrested, the message read, and a coup was underway. Within minutes, the journalist posted the information on X, and others followed suit. Soon enough, it was splashed across major Indian news networks and went viral on social media. The

Times Now Navbharat reported that Indian forces had entered Pakistan; TV9 Bharatvarsh told viewers that Pakistan's prime minister had surrendered; Bharat Samachar said he was hiding in a bunker. All of them, along with some of the country's largest channels - including Zee News, ABP News and NDTV - repeatedly proclaimed that major Pakistani cities had been destroyed. To support the false claims, networks aired unrelated visuals from conflicts in Gaza and Sudan, from a plane crash in Philadelphia - and even scenes from video games. Zee News, NDTV, ABP News, Bharat Samachar, TV9 Bharatvarsh, Times Now and Prasar Bharati did not respond to requests for comment.

Just before midnight on May 8, in a WhatsApp message exchange seen by The Post, a journalist with a major Hindi-language network messaged colleagues:

Across the border, Pakistani media outlets pushed their own falsehoods - that India had bombed Afghanistan and that Pakistan had destroyed India's army brigade headquarters. Some of the false claims came directly from Pakistani military spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry during live news conferences; in one, Chaudhry showed a clip from an Indian news conference that had been misleadingly edited to remove a phrase, giving the false impression that India hadn't accused Pakistan of hitting civilian infrastructure.

jun 8, 2025, 11:18 pm • 18 5

Replies

christ. reminds me of the panic in the World War Z book that led to Iran and Pakistan nuking each other.

jun 8, 2025, 11:31 pm • 0 0 • view

Have you watched Mountainhead yet?

jun 8, 2025, 11:32 pm • 1 0 • view