Fact Check: Screenshot of 'news' about a pilot urinating in the cockpit is fake
Pilot caught Pissing in the cockpit of PAF F-16 said urine increases efficiancy of Jets told by Allah in his dream...
By Newsmeter Network Published on 4 Jan 2021 12:23 PM GMT
Hyderabad: A screenshot that claimed to be a report from one of Pakistan's leading English newspapers, Dawn, has gone viral on social media with the headline "Pilot caught Pissing in the cockpit of PAF F-16 said urine increases efficiancy of Jets told by Allah in his dream. (sic)" with the dateline of June 10, 2020.
Click here and here to view the claims that have been posted on social media.
Fact Check:
NewsMeter searched for this report on the website of Dawn and found nothing. We also could not find any report by any other media organisation that addressed this issue.
Upon observation of the screenshot, we noticed that the report had several grammatical errors which would have been avoided if published by an authentic source.
Below are a few errors in the viral screenshot:
1. Several words in the sentence start with uppercase. (Example: the word PISSING)
2. The word "efficiency" is misspelled as "efficiancy".
3. Usage of the word "pissing" over "urinating" and "says" over "said".
4. No use of a period at the end of a headline.
We then compared the house style of the new organisation and of the viral screenshot and found that the Dawn website uses a serif font whereas the viral screenshot has the sans serif font. Secondly, the menu bar, author name and date line are also missing from the viral picture.
It should be noted that no media organisation would make grammatical errors of this sort or have a different house style for an article.
Evidently, it is clear that the screenshot is fake.
