Prasar Bharati rebuts Washington Post’s ‘false’ coup claim, demands apology
India’s public broadcaster says it never sent the alleged WhatsApp message on Pakistan coup and accuses US daily of bypassing fact-checks and damaging its credibility.
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Prasar Bharati has strongly refuted allegations made by The Washington Post in a June 4, 2025 article titled “How misinformation overtook Indian newsrooms amid conflict with Pakistan”, authored by Karishma Mehrotra.
The US daily had claimed that “shortly after midnight on May 9, an Indian journalist received a WhatsApp message from Prasar Bharati, the state-owned public broadcaster. Pakistan’s army chief had been arrested, the message read, and a coup was underway.”
In its rebuttal, Prasar Bharati said an investigation revealed no such message was ever sent. The organisation also rejected the publication’s assertion that it did not respond to requests for comment, stating that no senior official was contacted for verification before the story was published. The publication claimed that “…..Prasar Bharati did not respond to requests for comment”.
Prasar Bharati’s full statement:
"Prasar Bharati is India’s public broadcaster, well regarded for its credibility, trust and high journalistic ethics. Its news channels DD News and DD India have a stringent in-house mechanism of fact checking, which has been very credibly demonstrated in the reporting on Operation Sindoor. Not only did both news channels put out factually correct information during the entire operation, verified from credible sources, but also ensured that no unverified information is shared on any of their platforms.
Any claims to the contrary, not based on facts, as in the article of Washington Post, require an unconditional apology as such false claims besmirch Prasar Bharati’s impeccable reputation. It is reiterated that Prasar Bharati did not put out any such information as attributed by Washington Post and no senior official of Prasar Bharati was contacted prior to publishing of the said article."
The public broadcaster has called for an unconditional apology from The Washington Post, accusing the paper of publishing baseless allegations that undermine its “impeccable reputation.”
