Saturday, December 11, 2010

Fake WikiLeaks: Another First For Pakistan

Pakistan has won, again, the dubious computer-age distinction of being the first country in the world to introduce a cooked-up story citing some non-existent WikiLeaks cables for propaganda purposes.

Last time it got there first was when the first ever computer virus dubbed Brain was let loose in 1986 by two brothers from Lahore, Amjad Farooq Alvi and Basit Farooq Ali reportedly to deter any potential piracy of the software they had written.

This time some "agency" (news or otherwise) "hoaxed" almost all Pakistan newspapers to publish a story attributed to cables originating from American Embassy in New Delhi and leaked by now a world phenomenon, WikiLeaks in which American diplomats had been alleged to make disparaging remarks about Indian army generals. The source of the story was credited by the newspapers to an Islamabad-based news agency owned and chaired by some Mohsin Baig.

According to the story carried by English language the News and Urdu language the Jang, owned by the same group of newspapers, US diplomats reported in their cables that Indian government has secret links with Hindu fundamentalists; Indians are covertly supporting militants in Waziristan and Balochistan; and Indian Indian generals were geeks, vain, and genocidal; one of the generals was compared to Slobodan Milosevic and was engaged in a "genocide" against Muslims in Kashmir. In the same story there were accounts of "gushing American praise" for Pakistani generals.

The Guardian of London did its search of the WikiLeaks database and declared the reported story was "not accurate" and suggested the "incendiary allegations" were "the first case of WikiLeaks being exploited for propaganda purposes."

The Guardian said, "the lopsided media coverage highlights the strong influence of Pakistan's army over an otherwise vigorous free press."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/10/wikileaks-fake-cables-pakistan-apologies?
After the Guardian exposed the falsity of reported story Pakistani newspapers admitted that "they were hoaxed" and apologized "profusely".

The News had this to say about the story it had run day before:

The story was released by the Islamabad-based Online news agency and was run by The News and Daily Jang with the confidence that it was a genuine report and must have been vetted before release. However, several inquiries suggest that this was not the case.

When contacted, the owner of the agency, Mohsin Baig, and some of the editorial staff were themselves unclear about the source of the story and said they would investigate the matter at their end.

Mohsin Baig said he had just returned from Turkey where he had accompanied the prime minister on his official visit and was therefore in the dark about how the story was released. He said he would talk to his editorial staff and get back to us. After a while, Online's news editor contacted us and told us he too was unaware about the source of the story and would check and get back to us as soon as possible. Despite repeated requests, he declined to contact the employee who had downloaded the news, and asked us to check with them the next day. On further inquiries, we learnt from our sources that the story was dubious and may have been planted.

A check on the Internet as well as The Guardian report showed that the story was not based on Wikileaks cables, and had in fact originated from some local websites such as The Daily Mail and Rupee News known for their close connections with certain intelligence agencies. The Guardian quoted Shaheen Sehbai, Group Editor The News, as describing the story as “agencies’ copy” and said he would investigate its origins.

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