False Promotion

Did AARP endorse Joe Biden for president and give financial support to Planned Parenthood? No, both of those claims are not true: AARP is a nonprofit organization that is legally prohibited from supporting candidates and does not have a policy regarding abortion issues. An AARP spokesperson denied both assertions and the person making the claims offered no corroborating evidence. The…

Was "Kim Martin Morrow the CEO of Netflix" charged with 15 charges for child pornography? No, that's not true. Kim Martin Morrow is not the CEO of Netflix -- that is Reed Hastings -- and neither has been charged on 15 counts for child pornography. The story on someone named Morrow and pornography charges is completely made up, as was…

Did the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fraudulently add deaths from poisoning, trauma and unintentional injury to its tally of COVID-19 deaths? No, that's not true: That claim is based on a mischaracterization of CDC listings of patients' other health conditions, which are commonly listed on death certificates as "comorbidities." The claim cites as a source "c19study," an…

Did the King of Bahrain attend a convention with an eight-foot-tall weaponized robotic bodyguard? No, that's not true: This video shows a performer wearing a partially mechanized robot suit in a promotional appearance as "Titan the Robot" at the UAE defense show IDEX in Abu Dhabi in 2019. The claim originates from a video in a post published on Facebook…

Would a drop in the percent of positive tests for COVID-19 prove the U.S. has reached "herd immunity"? No, that's not true: The doctor overseeing the testing lab at the pandemic's ground zero says so-called 'positivity' data is not an indicator of herd immunity. Increasing numbers of COVID cases in Florida and Arizona at the time the claim was made…

Did Mel Gibson say that Hollywood is controlled by "parasites" who are involved in child sacrifice and pedophilia? No, there is nothing to substantiate the old claim that Gibson said it while on a promotional tour in 2017. The actor's spokesman told Lead Stories, "I can assure you that he never said such a thing ... he never stated that…

Was this photo taken outside a rally for Donald Trump in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 19 or 20, 2020? No, that's not true: This photo shows the staging area for the Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Rally for POW/MIAs. Pictured is the north parking lot at the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, before June 2019. The claim began appearing on social media…

Did CNN lighten the photo of the man who drove into a protester in Seattle and claim he was white? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that CNN used any form of an image showing the attacker's face lightened in their reporting. The CNN logo on the image is not the same logo currently used by CNN. The…

Is Derek Chauvin a crisis actor who has been involved in other "false flag" incidents, including the Boston marathon bombing and Sandy Hook massacre? No, that's not true. A meme and a video have gone viral claiming the fired Minneapolis police officer charged with second-degree murder in the death of George Floyd is part of the "shadow army" of "crisis…

Does an anti-vaccine video by Dr. Rashid Buttar show "undercover footage"? No, that's not true: The misleading title implies that this YouTube video will be the public unveiling of exclusive undercover footage of ... something. Viewers who fall for this clickbait headline will discover that Buttar only claims to have undercover footage. No "undercover footage" shows up in the nine-minute,…