Did U.S. Border Patrol agents find the body of a 6-year-old girl who was raped by 30 men near the Mexican border? No, that's not true: we contacted U.S. Customs and Border Protection to inquire about the incident and they told us they never heard about it. The only sites that mention it seem to base themselves on a video…
Did Minneapolis set up a "Sharia Hotline" to report Americans criticizing Islam? No, that's not true: a website that makes a living by copy pasting real bits of news and then adding a fake headline to attract clicks has claimed that a new hotline to report hate crimes is a "sharia hotline". It is not true. The story originated from…
Did President Trump warn flu vaccinations are the greatest scam in medical history? No, that's not true: an old article from YourNewsWire (a fake news website that got fact checked so often it had to change its name) was copied by several other sites and keeps going viral (pun not intended). It was all based on an old radio interview…
YourNewsWire used to be one of the most notorious websites spreading fake news, often by using bits and pieces of real news articles from other websites to create new articles which would then get a headline and introduction that would greatly overstate or even outright lie about what was really happening. Earlier this year Poynter did a profile about the…
Did Senator Chuck Grassley "vow to imprison" anybody falsely accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh? No, that's not true. Infamous fake news website YourNewsWire made the claim in a headline and then later changed "imprison" to "prosecute" but evidence of the change remains visible in the URL of the story and in an archived version (along with several partially plagiarised…
CNN's chief Jeff Zucker did not order his producers and reporters to squash any reporting on violence in Chicago as a way to protect Democrats from criticism, contrary to a story that's trending on social media. In fact, Zucker is not calling the shots at CNN for a while since he recently began a two-month medical leave to deal with…
Did former President Barack Obama say he supports the seizure of white farmer's land in South Africa? No, that's a fake quote, made up by a website that plagiarises articles from other websites about real news events and then adds some invented claims in the headline and first paragraphs to attract more clicks and make more advertising money. The quotes…
The alleged connection between NXIVM and Hillary Clinton has been a popular conspiracy theory for weeks since a Seattle man claimed he saw Clinton aide Huma Abedine and her ex-husband and former congressman Anthony Weiner at a sex cult "mixer" in 2007. Ben Szemkus also said he met Stormy Daniels, the porn star who says she had sex with Donald…
Did Melissa Hodgman, wife of FBI agent Peter Strzok, block all FBI investigations of Clinton-related cases? No, that's not true and the article claiming she did directly contradicts itself. The headline making the claim was made up by a site that liberally copy-pastes content from other sites and then adds some made up facts to its own headlines and introductory…
Did the U.K. government "accidentally" sell 10,000 children to child traffickers? No, that's not true: the claim was made by a site that takes real news articles and then adds some invented facts to the headline and first paragraphs of its own version of the story, often involving pedophiles or conspiracies. The people behind the site presumably do this to…
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