Did "leaked reports" say George Soros paid ABC moderators $1 million each to fact check Donald Trump during the September 10, 2024, presidential debate? No, that's not true: The story came from a website whose satire disclaimer reads: "These articles are meant to be humorous and are often entirely made up." No credible evidence of "leaked reports" or such payments to journalists could be located by Lead Stories.
The claim came from an article published by spacexmania.com on September 12, 2024, titled "Leaked Reports Claim George Soros Paid ABC Moderators $1 Million Each to Fact-Check Trump" (archived here). It began:
In a revelation that has sent shockwaves across the political landscape--and provided endless fodder for conspiracy theorists--leaked reports have allegedly confirmed that billionaire George Soros paid $1 million to each ABC moderator.
This is what the article on spacexmania.com looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: spacexmania.com screenshot taken on Mon Sep 16 16:01:51 2024 UTC)
The website that published the claim describes itself as satire. The about page (archived here) of spacexmania.com reads:
Welcome to our website, owned and operated by Funky Productions LLC. We are a team of writers and editors based in New York, USA. Our mission? To bring you the freshest fake news, some sassy analysis, and a good dose of satire, all rolled into one crazy concoction that orbits around Elon Musk and everything that's lighting up the viral/trending charts.
Plus, as the screenshot of the article above shows, the article had a satire label at the top left corner, above the headline (red arrow added by Lead Stories):
(Source: spacexmania.com screenshot taken on Mon Sep 16 16:01:51 2024 UTC)
Despite the "satire" label on the original article, some social media users shared the story without any indication of its source or the label. A post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on September 14, 2024, presented the bogus claim as real. It read:
BREAKING: New leaks indicate Linsey Davis and David Muir were each paid a million dollars from the Kamala campaign for 'moderating the ABC debate.'
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Sep 16 16:58:32 2024 UTC)
A search across Google News for the keywords seen here (archived here) didn't show a single credible news article covering the purported Soros payments to ABC moderators of the September 10, 2024, presidential debate.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks about the presidential debate can be found here. Additional Lead Stories fact checks concerning spacexmania.com can be found here.
