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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Culture & entertainment fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about culture & entertainment. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

3,169 published reviews in this topic

Deutsche Presse-AgenturCulture & entertainment

Ein vermeintliches Zitat des französischen Philosophen Voltaire (1694 bis 1778) ist immer wieder in sozialen Netzwerken zu lesen: "Wenn du wissen willst, wer dich beherrscht, finde heraus, wen du nicht kritisieren darfst."

Publisher’s rating: Das Zitat stammt nicht von Voltaire, sondern von einem US-amerikanischen Neonazi

The claim concerns a saying circulating online that is attributed to Voltaire: “If you want to know who rules over you, find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” The dpa review traces the saying to a different source. It reports that Nicholas Cronk, director of Oxford University’s Voltaire Foundation, said the saying “seems to go back to something written in 1993 by Kevin Alfred Strom,” whom the review describes as an American neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier. The review identifies the earlier source as Strom’s 1993 nationalist, anti-communist radio broadcast, “All America Must Know the Terror That is Upon Us,” distributed through his station, “American Dissident Voices.” The broadcast’s wording asks listeners to determine a society’s true rulers by asking who they are not permitted to criticize. This establishes a documented earlier source for the central idea, rather than merely showing that the attribution to Voltaire is disputed. The review also reports that Strom himself addressed the misattribution in a 2007 article: he said Voltaire had not said the line, or anything similar, and that the saying came from him. Taken together, the expert’s attribution to Strom, the cited broadcast, and Strom’s own later statement support the conclusion that the familiar saying is not a quotation by Voltaire.

Deutsche Presse-AgenturCulture & entertainment

Op Facebook circuleert een bericht met de bewering dat het dagboek van Anne Frank voor een deel met balpen is geschreven. Anne is in 1945 in het concentratiekamp Bergen-Belsen op 15-jarige leeftijd overleden. Balpennen zouden daarentegen pas in 1952 op de markt zijn gekomen, wordt er gezegd.

Publisher’s rating: De bewering klopt niet. Geen enkel deel van het dagboek van Anne Frank is met balpen geschreven.

The Facebook post claimed that some of Anne Frank’s diary was written in ballpoint, despite her death in Bergen-Belsen in 1945, because ballpoint pens supposedly did not reach the market until 1952. The review reports that the authenticity of the diary had been examined scientifically several times, including an extensive investigation in the early 1980s by the Dutch Forensic Laboratory, then part of the Netherlands Forensic Institute. According to the review’s account of that investigation, most of the diary was written in grey-blue fountain-pen ink. Anne also used thin red ink, green and red colored pencil, and black pencil; the examination did not identify ballpoint writing as part of her diary. This evidence addresses the claimed writing medium directly, rather than relying only on the dates asserted in the Facebook post. The review traces the ballpoint story to a 1980 report by Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), which mentioned “ballpoint corrections” on a few loose sheets. But the review says later forensic findings clarified that these were two separate note pages, not ballpoint corrections in Anne’s original text. The pages had been placed among the original diary sheets around 1960 and contained notes by handwriting examiner Dorothea Ockelmann, who had worked on a team studying Anne’s writings in 1959.

FACTLYCulture & entertainment

India TV telecasted news that Bollywood Actor Shahrukh Khan donated 45 Crore Rupees to Pakistan Oil tanker blast victims

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video clip presented as evidence that India TV reported Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan had donated 45 crore rupees to victims of Pakistan’s oil-tanker blast. FACTLY says the clip was taken from India TV’s fact-check video, where an anchor read social-media posts criticizing Khan over the alleged donation. The clip’s presentation omitted the point of that segment: India TV was debunking the allegation, not reporting it as true. The review therefore describes the circulating video as a clipped version that falsely suggests the opposite of the original segment’s conclusion. (S1: “In the posted video, the news anchor reads out the Facebook posts put by various users, in which they criticize Sharukh Khan for the donation and goes on to tell that Sharukh hasn’t made any donation to any mishaps or accidents in India.”; “The video is a clipped version of India TV’s fact-check video. In the original fact-check video, India TV has debunked the same claim and concluded that Shahrukh has not made any donation to Pakistan Oil tanker blast victims.”) To check the clip’s provenance, FACTLY says it searched for keywords shown in the video and found the full version on India TV’s YouTube channel. According to the review, that full video addressed social-media posts that had circulated in 2017 and concluded that Khan’s media team had told the channel the allegation was baseless and that he had made no donation to the blast victims. The reported clarification from the media team, together with the full video’s fact-check context, is the evidence the review offers against interpreting the excerpt as a genuine announcement of a donation. (S1: “When searched with the keywords shown in the video, the full version of the video was found on the YouTube channel of ‘India TV’.”; “The channel debunked the claim and concluded that Sharukh Khan’s Media Team has clarified to them that such news is baseless and Sharukh Khan hasn’t made any donation to the victims of Pakistan Oil tanker blast.”)