Why Pakistan’s Tech Journalists Need More Technical Depth Pakistani fact-checkers found that four out of five viral claims they investigated in the past two years were false or misleading, and AI-related fact-checks rose sixfold in a single year — yet most newsrooms still assign the "technology beat" to whichever reporter is free, not to anyone trained to tell a real breach from a rumour or a genuine model release from a marketing stunt.

Abstract

The Centre of Excellence in Journalism at IBA Karachi reviewed 1,026 potentially false or misleading claims circulating in Pakistan between December 2023 and November 2025 through its iVerify fact-checking project. Of the 513 it investigated in depth, 78.2 percent turned out to be false and another 19.7 percent misleading — meaning fewer than one in fifty stood up to scrutiny. AI-related fact-checks alone rose sixfold in 2025 compared with the year before, as generative tools made fabricated speeches, deepfake endorsements, and subtly altered footage cheap and easy to produce. During the May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict, recycled footage and AI-generated claims spread faster than either country's information ministries could respond to them.