Fact Check on Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Did a Danish scientist discover a 14-foot-tall white bird in Antarctica? No, that's not true: This fictional scientific discovery video was fabricated with artificial intelligence and follows a recently trending formula to produce eye-catching conspiracy content to monetize it on social media. The images of the scientist and his purported discovery, and the voice of the script reader resembling that…

Is the U.S. government providing $5,000 to each illegal migrant and to all Americans? No, neither element of the claim is true: An immigration policy think tank contacted by Lead Stories said these claims are a "false rumor" that has been circulating since December 2023. Immigrants who enter the country illegally generally are not eligible for most federal benefits or…

Is this an authentic March, 2024 photo, showing flames billowing behind a President Vladimir Putin re-election billboard that reads "stability" in Russian? No, that's not true: The image was computer-generated, according to tools created to detect AI art. Earlier versions of posts with the picture contained the kinds of anomalies that are common to AI-generated images. The claim appeared in…

Is former CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr a mass shooting crisis actor? No, that's not true: The images used in the social media post purporting to show Starr at shootings and bombings in the United States are not photos of Starr. Lead Stories found the originals of two of the images in the post. Neither shows Starr. She reported on…

Were the Twa tribe the first people to live in modern-day Ireland? No, that's not true: Lead Stories found no evidence supporting this claim. An archeologist and professor of African history interviewed by Lead Stories was not aware of any facts pointing in that direction, either. The claim reappeared in a post (archived here) on TikTok where it was published…