A video showing an US Army band playing the Indian national anthem during the joint Indo-US military exercise conducted last week was misreported by CNBC Awaaz and CNN News 18 as preparation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's arrival for the 'Howdy Modi' rally.
The mega event - Howdy Modi is scheduled to take place on Sunday with Modi expected to address over 50,000 Indian diaspora in Houston, Texas. United States President Donald Trump has also confirmed his participation. (Read more)
Hours before the event, two media outlets - CNBC Awaaz and CNN News 18 carried a week old of the US army playing the Indian national anthem with a false claim that it showed the US army prepping for the Howdy Modi event.
CNN News 18 tweeted on Sunday the video with a caption, "US army playing the Indian national anthem in preparation for PM Narendra Modi's arrival at the Howdy Modi event." The tweet and the video were soon deleted.
Below is the screenshot -
The Hindi news channel of CNBC, CNBC Awaaz tweeted the same video with the same caption in Hindi. The caption carried the hashtag of Howdy Modi.
#HowdyModi । अमेरिकन आर्मी की खास तैयारी, US Army Band ने India के National Anthem की बजाई धुन, आप भी सुनिए pic.twitter.com/kGGr2C5KKa
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Viral on Facebook
The video description in the tweets by CNBC Awaaz and CNN News 18 is the same as the caption on Facebook. The video has been widely shared by Facebook.
FACT-CHECK
Running a simple keyword search on Google with 'US Army', 'Indian National Anthem' we found that the video is from a joint Indo-US military exercise on September 18, 2019.
The tune of Indian national anthem was played by an US army band during the Yudh Abhyas 2019, a joint Indian and US army training operation held at Joint Base Lewis, McChord.
Yudh Abhyas is one of the largest running joint military training and defence corporation endeavours between India and the US and this was the 15th edition of the joint exercise hosted alternately between the two countries reported The Indian Express.
BOOM had previously fact-checked a pre-election video aired by Times Now as NRIs prepping for ‘Howdy Modi’ rally. (Read more here)