Scam

Did Rachel Maddow, tennis champion Coco Gauff and former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, plus dozens of other prominent Americans, post identical brave notes from a hospital bed, saying "I still have a long road ahead. But I believe in recovery -- through love, through support, and through everyone's thoughts and prayers."? No, that's not true: The stories, with identical…

Did Barack Obama, Donald Trump or Marco Rubio "just cut the ribbon on a $150 million free education and health campus, entirely funded "by his own pocket", without a single tax dollar."? No, none of them did: The made-up stories are among dozens cranked out by Vietnam-based publishers building traffic on Facebook with stories attractive to fans of Obama, Trump…

New visa directives wrongly conflate journalism with censorship The International Fact-Checking Network is deeply concerned by reports that the U.S. State Department has instructed consular officers to deny visas to individuals who have worked in fact-checking, content moderation, and trust and safety. Fact-checking is journalism. It is the straightforward work of comparing public claims against the best available evidence and…

When I received an invitation last month to come to Macedonia to talk with the fact checkers and journalists at the Metamorphosis Foundation about Lead Stories' experience with our automatically generated short-form fact checking videos, I didn't hesitate for a moment. Ever since 2019 when I wrote about a network of Macedonian fake news websites operating out of the town…

Did Pete Buttigieg stand at the podium at a public town hall meeting with Joe Biden joining by live feed, and announce he's running for President in 2028? No, that's not true: At the time the rumor was posted, no news outlets had carried the story of such an announcement by the former Secretary of Transportation. There were no news…

Is a high-end Seattle store called "Matthew's Haberdashery" moving to Charlotte, North Carolina and selling Seattle-made men's clothes at a discount in a moving sale? No, that's not true: the store never existed, and the website and Facebook page appeared just 39 days before the moving sale was underway. Lead Stories easily found the exact photos from the Matthew's website…

Did Oprah Winfrey give $1 million to the Chicago mom who was attacked by a group of kids? No, that's not true: The mom who was brutally assaulted on video has not posted anything about Winfrey giving her $1 million on her social media account. Her official GoFundMe has only $28,000 as of publication date. There are no legitimate news…

Did prominent Americans like Elon Musk, Caitlin Clark, Stephen Colbert, and Joy Behar each pay down $667,000 of schoolkids' lunchroom debts? No, there's no evidence that's true: In the case of FBI Director Kash Patel, the gift was inflated to $979,000, which would be more than five times his FBI salary.The posts making the claims include no evidence by which…

This is what fact checkers call a "prebunk." A prebunk is like a debunk (another word for fact check), only it's an advance notice of an anticipated false claim. This article is intended to inoculate you from future outbreaks of a specific type of false claims about your favorite entertainment celebrities, sports stars, and politicians. We call this "Viet Spam"…

Did U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement "rebrand" itself to be publicly known as Homeland Security Investigators, not ICE? No, that's not true: ICE still exists under the same old name. "Homeland Security Investigators" discussed in social media posts is not a brand-new entity -- it has operated since 2010 as one of the major divisions within ICE, but the correct…