France 24 clip on anti-Pakistan campaign was doctored, fact-check finds

A viral video circulating on social media falsely claims to show France 24 reporting that fake accounts posing as Iranian users were part of a coordinated disinformation campaign against Pakistan. The footage, however, was manipulated and no such report was aired by the broadcaster.

The claim began spreading after a social media user posted a video on X on March 29. The clip, which runs for more than a minute, appears to show a France 24 news segment carrying a headline about Indian and Afghan operators allegedly posing as Iranians online to spread misinformation against Pakistan.

In the video, the anchor is heard saying that cyber intelligence had identified a coordinated campaign targeting Pakistan. The audio also claims that operators based in India and Afghanistan were systematically impersonating Iranian users on social media platform X and attempting to undermine Pakistan’s role in facilitating talks between Iran and the United States.

Fact Check found that France 24 never aired any such segment. A reverse image search showed that the footage had been taken from an episode of France 24’s programme Scoop, originally broadcast on March 27.

That episode focused on media coverage of the war in Israel and restrictions imposed by the Israeli military censor on the press. It did not contain any reference to Pakistan or any mention of Indian or Afghan actors posing as Iranian users online.

The fact-check also found that the format of the viral clip did not match France 24’s original presentation style. The original France 24 video, from which the footage was taken, includes unrelated content and does not support the claims made in the manipulated version.

Geo Fact Check further analysed the audio by extracting it from the viral clip and running it through Hiya, an AI detection tool used to identify synthetic voice patterns. The tool flagged the audio as a deepfake and gave it an authenticity score of 10 out of 100, indicating a high probability that it had been generated using artificial intelligence.

The verdict concluded that the viral video was manipulated. France 24 did not broadcast any report alleging that users in India and Afghanistan were posing as Iranian accounts in a disinformation campaign against Pakistan, and the clip was created by combining unrelated footage with AI-generated audio.