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Pakistan deputy PM Ishaq Dar falls for fake news while hailing air force, local media fact checks
Pakistani newspaper The Dawn said that its iVerify Pakistan team investigated the content of the image and determined it to be fake.
In yet another gaffe by a Pakistani miniter, the country’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister Ishaq Dar cited a fake news report praising the Pakistan Air Force during his address in the Senate on Thursday.
“Telegraph writes Pakistan Air Force is the undisputed king of the skies,” said Ishaq Dar during his address. But to his embarrassment, he was citing a fake news headline circulating on social media.
According to the Press Information Bureau’s Fact Check unit, an image circulating on social media claims to show the front page of UK-based newspaper The Daily Telegraph, featuring a headline that reads: "Pakistan Air Force: The undisputed king of the skies” dated 10th May 2025.
However, the image is AI-generated and the claim made in it is fake, PIB Fact Check said. “The Daily Telegraph has NEVER carried any such article,” it added.
PIB Fact Check also carried a video of Ishaq Dar making the remark in the senate and captioned it, “This #fake claim was further amplified by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar during his statement to the Senate on 15 May 2025. By endorsing a completely fabricated image and headline, #Pakistan intentionally lent official weight to a piece of digital deception.”
However, even before the PIB, Dar was fact checked by the media of his own country just hours later. Pakistani newspaper The Dawn said its iVerify Pakistan team investigated the content and determined it to be fake, reported ANI.
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The newspaper’s fact check unit analyzed the image going viral on social meda through its tools and found multiple discrepancies such as spelling errors, mistyped and jumped sentences and language inconsistencies, it reported.
Imran Mukhtar, a Pakistani journalist also fact checked the image.
“How fake news overshadows the truth: Earlier today, Deputy PM & Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar cited this false news, during his speech on the floor of the Senate, to support claims of PAF’s dominance over India. No doubt, the PAF did dominate — but the image in question is fake,” he wrote in a post on X.
