Analysis

Is that another new logo in our website footer and sidebar? Yes, it is: We are pleased to announce Lead Stories is now a verified member of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network. We applied in May 2024 because of our work in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Belarus and Ukraine. After a long and thorough assessment procedure, we were informed on…

What's that blue butterfly in the row of social media icons in the sidebar and footer of our website? Lead Stories is happy to announce we are now also present on the Bluesky social media network. Follow our accounts if you want to get immediate updates from our English, Spanish, Ukrainian, Russian, Slovak, Bulgarian, Hungarian or Romanian websites. Or follow…

If you spot something online that you think might be misinformation you can now report it directly through our WhatsApp tipline. Your tip will be forwarded to our reporters for further investigation but we will also automatically perform a search for you and see if we already have a fact check that might match with the claim in your tip.…

Each year on April 2nd, fact checkers around the globe celebrate International Fact-Checking Day to stress the importance of fact checking. Fact checkers add to the conversation by making accurate information available to everyone and by separating fact from fiction. Because healthy debate starts with having correct information and real examples available instead of bogus statistics and made-up stories. The…

If you have been following Lead Stories on TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp or YouTube you may have already seen them, but now we're making it official. Lead Stories is proud to present "The Daily NOT," a show presented by robot hosts Artie Ficial and Botty McBotface. The Daily NOT is your daily video overview of all fact checks done by Lead…

Update: April Fools! Dozens of people tried registering their username, which shows there is a great need for facts on social media. Go here if you want to make your social media timeline a little more factual... Introducing: Fact/Line™ Lead Stories is proud to present Fact/Line™: a brand new social network based on facts and fact checking. Wouldn't it be…

If you love our fact checks you can now also get them delivered straight to your phone via our brand new WhatsApp channel. If you follow us you won't just be getting a link and a headline each time we publish one but also a short video summary (with captions so you can watch without sound). At the end of…

Mike & Dennis At Lead Stories we have a long history of looking at Mike Lindell's election fraud claims. Readers will remember our fact checks about Lindell's four conspiracy-filled election fraud "documentaries" here, here, here and here, or our coverage of his Cyber Symposium here. We also warned him about Dennis Montgomery, a man with a long history of providing…

So you've probably read all those warnings from pundits, academics and researchers about how generative AI tools like ChatGPT are going to impact disinformation and fact checking. And you may have even seen some recent examples of a deep-faked pope in a puffer jacket or Donald Trump being arrested. But let me tell you the story of a real-life example…

As you could tell by the date, this was an April Fools' joke and we didn't really launch a mad conspiracy-spewing AI bot. Hope you enjoyed it! Colorado Springs - Award-winning fact checking organization Lead Stories is proud to announce the launch of FactGPT, the world's first AI-powered fact checking chatbot. Combining the power of Lead Stories' database of existing…

This article lays out the evidence Alan Gray (CEO of alternative news site NewsBlaze) is quite likely the key person behind the anonymously published website named Real Science hosted on the domain name goodsciencing.com. It was recently in the news because it was the source for some spectacular (but wrong) statistics about athletes suffering cardiac arrests (here's our fact…

The year is almost over, so it is good to look back. First, the numbers, as of December 15, 2022. This year we have published 1,555 fact checks in English (so far ...) 283 fact checks about COVID misinformation; 244 debunks of Russian propaganda and false claims about the invasion of Ukraine; 140 debunks of false claims about election fraud,…

The celebrity death hoax has long been a clickbait staple, but recently one network has taken it to extremes, using scores of websites to host its content and an automated army of bots to push the links into Facebook groups. Many Facebook users and group administrators have noticed a sharp increase in spam postings of false death hoaxes. Examples of…

Is the new Russian website "War on Fakes" a real and reliable fact checking website run by "experts and journalists"? We have questions. The site appeared to spring up almost overnight in early March 2022 in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and started publishing articles in several languages meant to look like fact checks, often accompanied with…

Colorado Springs - In response to the escalating events and the outbreak of a war between Russia and Ukraine at the end of February 2022 Lead Stories today announces the launch of Russian and Ukrainian versions of its award-winning fact checking website leadstories.com The new sites are located at russian.leadstories.com and ukrainian.leadstories.com and are staffed by veteran journalists fluent in…

On November 10, 2021, Lead Stories published a fact check about an article published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on November 2, 2021. In response, the BMJ published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg on December 17, 2021, calling our fact check "inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible." We addressed their concerns in a December 18, 2021, article, going over their…

Ms. Susan Wojcicki, It's been almost two years since the COVID-19 pandemic started. The world has seen time and time again how destructive disinformation and misinformation can be for social harmony, democracy, and public health; too many lives and livelihoods have been ruined, and far too many people have lost loved ones to disinformation. As an international network of fact-checking…

The British Medical Journal published an open letter on December 17, 2021 (archived here) taking issue with a Lead Stories fact check. Our response is below (UPDATE: also see "Context Matters: Why Lead Stories Fact Checked The BMJ"): It is ironic to read that BMJ.com objects to the headline on Lead Stories' fact check of a BMJ.com article when the…

Wanted for Defamation On November 5, 2021, a website named Conservative Beaver published a false story about the CEO of Pfizer being arrested for fraud. It wasn't the first false story published by the website and it wouldn't be the last: Only a few days later the site falsely claimed Myriam Bourla (the wife of Pfizer's CEO Albert Bourla) died…

Did the materials released by Mike Lindell at his Cyber Symposium meet evidentiary standards of relevance, proof of origin, chain-of-secure-custody and reproducibility that online security experts say would be needed to take seriously his claim that he holds massive data files showing the 2020 election was stolen by hackers? No, that's not true. Lead Stories asked for the information necessary…