Did CNN Prima News scaremonger in reporting on a fire at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant of Zaporizhzhia? No, that's not true: The event on August 11, 2024, was reported by all major world media outlets and followed by the International Atomic Agency in Vienna, the intergovernmental organization that closely monitors the plant, located in a territory occupied by Russia and close to the war zone.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on August 11, 2024. It shows a screenshot of a social media post by Czech privately-owned TV broadcaster CNN Prima News about a fire that developed at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine on August 11, 2024. The person speaking in the video says in Czech, translated by Lead Stories staff into English:
So this is really too much on Prima, if it's scaremongering then the judiciary and police should act
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Aug 19 06:43:59 2024 UTC)
The video uses a screenshot of a post published on the official Facebook account of CNN Prima News on August 11, 2024, at 21:22 Central European Summer Time (archived here). The post, labeled as a "special report," says in Czech, as translated by Lead Stories staff: "Fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, thick smoke rising. Zelenskyy blames the Russians, reported on the radiation situation." On the same day, CNN Prima News also published an article with further information (archived here) on its website, citing Ukraine´s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had earlier informed about the event on his X account (archived here). The news site also published another article on August 12, 2024, adding that the fire had been extinguished, including a Russian statement that there was no radiation leak and the allegation from Russia that the fire was caused by Ukrainians (archived here).
In his post, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine had reported that the Russian occupiers had started a fire "on the territory" of the nuclear plant and that since the day Russia seized the plant from Ukraine, it has been using it to "blackmail Ukraine, all of Europe and the world." He added that "currently, radiation levels are within the norm." The post also included a video of the site showing a plume of smoke from one of the plant's cooling towers, pictured in a screenshot below.
Russia seized control of the plant shortly after the invasion of Ukraine started in March 2022. 
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Aug 19 06:43:59 2024 UTC)
It wasn't only CNN Prima News that reported on the event: The world's major media publications all covered the fire along the same lines, citing Zelenskyy's post and the aftermath, as Russia and Ukraine traded blame for how the fire started at the plant, with Russia claiming that a Ukrainian drone attack had caused it, without providing evidence. News reports on the event from Reuters, Euronews, BNN Bloomberg, and Le Monde can be seen here (archived here), here (archived here), here (archived here), or here (archived here).
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also issued its first statement about the situation (archived here) at the plant on August 11, 2024, saying that its experts heard "multiple explosions throughout the evening" and witnessed "thick, dark smoke" in the northwestern area of the plant site. The statement also said that the management of the plant, now under Russian control, informed them of an alleged drone attack that hit two of the plant's cooling towers. It added that there was no impact on the nuclear safety of the site.
The agency also said on August 12, 2024, after its experts visited the site, that they found no sign of drone remains and could not "immediately" determine what caused the fire at the site (archived here). As of August 19, 2024, at the time of writing, there was no statement on the IAEA website about the cause of the fire (archived here).
