&Quot;Stephen Colbert&Quot;

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 singer Bob Dylan just "ignite a firestorm" with a single sentence about Charlie Kirk and was that sentence "If you want people to speak kindly after you're gone, speak kindly while you're alive"? No, that's not true: Dylan is just the latest victim in a series of Facebook posts falsely attributing the same quote to various celebrities. According to…

Did Rachel Maddow, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel just team up and launch a newsroom named "The Independent Desk"? No, that's not true: The story appeared on a recently launched website that does not list owners or publishers and it just adds Jimmy Kimmel to an older false story about Maddow and Colbert. The new story also contains verifiably untrue…

Did Stephen Colbert announce he was opening a $10 million "paradise" for dogs and cats? No, that's not true: The story is completely made up. There is no evidence that Colbert has said that he will be spending $10 million to open a care center for stray pets. The article about the announcement is copy/paste clickbait and appears to generate…

Did Mookie Betts or other athletes say "If you want people to speak kindly about you after you're gone, then you should speak kindly while you're alive." in relation to the shooting of Charlie Kirk? No, that's not true: The fake quote, also attributed online to Bryce Harper, Mike Norvell, Jalen Hurts, Brock Purdy, Julian Sayin, Aaron Judge, Dwayne "The…

Did Elon Musk sign a $13.5 million deal with Netflix for a 7-episode series about his "turbulent journey" as of September 3, 2025? No, that's not true: There is no evidence Musk signed a Netflix deal. The only source making the claim is a website that publishes hundreds of fake stories each day, including debunked claims that Stephen Colbert and…

Did George Strait sign a $13.5 million deal with Netflix for a 7-episode series about his journey to become a music legend as of September 2, 2025? No, that's not true: There is no evidence Strait signed a Netflix deal. The only source making the claim is a website that publishes hundreds of fake stories each day promoted by Facebook…

Did Stephen Colbert sign a $13.5 million deal with Netflix for a 7-episode series about his journey through American TV history as of September 1, 2025? No, that's not true: Although Colbert joked in August that Netflix should call him, there is no evidence Colbert signed a Netflix deal. The only source making the claim is a website that publishes…

Did country music legend George Strait reject a $500 million deal from Elon Musk to endorse Tesla? No, that's not true: This is a fake story designed to get people to click on a link to a website. This identical fake story, with the same fake quote, keeps getting recycled with different celebrity names attached. The fake story appeared in…

Is a photo showing Melania Trump kissing Jeffrey Epstein an authentic image and was it "unseen" until aired by Stephen Colbert? No, that's not true: The photo is not real and it was not shown on an episode of CBS's "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." The Hive Moderation AI content detection tool rated the image as 99% fake. The…