Parts of Pakistan continue to be affected by monsoon rain, which has caused floods and land sliding. According to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), on 16^th August 2022, 635 people died across four provinces and two administered units, most of them in Balochistan (196 fatalities). More than 1,010 individuals have been injured, over 70,000 houses have been damaged. In addition, 110,440 livestock have been lost and more than 2,800 km of roads and 130 bridges have been damaged.

Pakistani well-known journalist, Hamid Mir, posted a video on Twitter from his official verified account, which shows an infant drowned in flood was rescued by a man. The post grabbed the attention of thousands. At the time of reporting, the video was viewed by more than 70 thousand users, retweeted by more than 1500 users and liked by more than 5 thousand users. 

(Screenshot from Twitter post)

Debunked Source

جسے اللّٰہ رکھے اسے کون چکھے ، اللّٰہ نے اس ننھی جان کو بچا لیا ہزاروں لاکھوں سیلاب متاثرین کو بھی اللّٰہ ہی کا آسرا ہے pic.twitter.com/lauZkJXAYu

— Hamid Mir (@HamidMirPAK) August 25, 2022

Fact-check

In order to verify the claim, we extracted the keyframe of the video and performed a reverse image search.

Reverse image search revealed that the same video was shared on Iran based news website “Akharin Khabar” on 19^th December 2019, the article lacks information about the origin of the incident, as a person can be heard speaking “Urdu/Hindi” language.

(Screenshot from Akharin Khabar website)

Further investigation revealed that the same video was posted on Facebook by a Pakistani user on 12^th December 2020, with no caption.

Source

https://fb.watch/f70k_mleAD/\

https://akharinkhabar.ir/gallery/9019441

Rating

False Context/Misleading

Conclusion

Our fact-check confirmed that a 2-year-old video was being shared falsely linking it to the current floods in Pakistan. Disinformation disseminated from a high-profile journalist is misleading thousands of social media users. 

ABCDE Framework-Based Analysis 

Actor	A well-known journalist from Pakistan is involved in disseminating misleading content.
Behavior	Video of an infant who was rescued by a man was linked with recent floods in Pakistan, the video was shared by a verified twitter account.
Content	Social Media posts.
Degree	No synthetic means were used to make the content viral.
Effect	The short video grabbed the attention of thousands of users. The feelings were mixed, some criticized the government for being senseless while others praised the lord for this miracle.