By Archis Chowdhury
A video showing a news anchor laughing during a news telecast is being shared on social media with the claim that it shows a Zimbabwean anchor laughing while speaking of the recent cricket match between Zimbabwe and Pakistan, which ended with a loss for the latter.
BOOM found this claim to be false; the video is two years old and shows a Ghanaian anchor laughing as he mispronounces names of European football clubs while reading out match fixtures from football leagues.
On October 27, Pakistan and Zimbabwe faced each other during the Super12 phase at the T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia. Zimbabwe won by 1 run in an upsetting loss for Pakistan, following which the viral video was shared by Indian users to troll Pakistan.
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Twitter user Sumita Misra, having over 1 lakh followers, shared the video with the caption, "#PAKvsZIM A News anchor from #Zimbabwe 🙈"
Similar tweets were posted by multiple users who made the exact same claim as Misra. View them here, here and here.
Facebook users also took to the social media platform to share similar claims with the exact same video, as it can be seen here, here and here.
Fact-Check
BOOM noticed a logo in the viral video which said "UTV".
Taking cue from this, we did a keyword search with "utv anchor laughing", which led us to a video on the YouTube channel of UTV Ghana Online. The video showed the exact same anchor wearing the same clothes, with the video having the exact same background visuals.
The title of the video read, "Real news with Akrobeto - Episode 29". Another Google search led us to the Instagram account of Akwasi Boadi, also known as Akrobeto, who describes himself as an actor and TV Host for UTV Ghana.
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We continued to search for videos of Akrobeto reading out sports news on UTV Ghana Online's YouTube channel, and eventually came across a longer unedited version of the viral video.
At the 0:51 mark, you can see the anchor breaking out in laughter like in the viral video. The video was uploaded on October 31, 2020 - nearly two years before the Pakistan - Zimbabwe match.
