Celebrity & Entertainment Team
Hira Saleem
Celebrity Research & Fact-Check Writer · Karachi, Pakistan
Checks the facts that celebrity readers care about most — ages, heights, careers, relationships and net worth — against sources that hold up.
Part of the Celebrity & Entertainment team, led by Sofia Marquez
About Hira
Hira is the team’s researcher. Celebrity facts spread from site to site, often copied without anyone checking where they came from, and a wrong figure can sit unchallenged for years. Hira traces each claim back to an interview, an official record or a reputable outlet before it goes into a profile.
She started out writing about Pakistani television and film, which taught her to work in more than one language and to treat fan wikis as a starting point rather than an answer. She now researches international and South Asian celebrities alike.
Four years in, she builds the fact sheets the writers work from and checks finished profiles before they go to the editor.
What she works on
- Celebrity biography research
- Fact sheets for writers
- Age, height and net worth checks
- South Asian entertainment coverage
- Correcting outdated profile facts
Background
How she got here
Education
Bachelor’s degree in Media Sciences, with research methods and broadcast journalism.
Early work
Entertainment writing on Pakistani television and film, in English and Urdu.
Into research
Fact-checking celebrity profiles for entertainment sites, tracing every figure back to its source.
Now
Celebrity research and fact-checking at Infinity Linkers, within the Celebrity & Entertainment team.
Her team
Celebrity & Entertainment team
Hira reports to Sofia Marquez, Head of Entertainment Content. Her fact sheets go to Kiri Walker and Hannah Brooks before they start writing, and she checks their finished drafts on the way back.
Approach
Find the first source
Ten websites repeating the same number does not make it true; it usually means one of them got it wrong first. Hira looks for the original interview, filing or announcement, and when the record genuinely conflicts, the profile says so rather than picking a figure at random.
Outside work she watches old Pakistani dramas with her family, reads true-crime nonfiction and keeps a running list of facts she has corrected.