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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

FACTLYCulture & entertainment

Visuals of a massive crowd gathered to celebrate the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People on 09 August 2023.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video presented as showing a large crowd celebrating the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People on 09 August 2023. The review identifies the footage instead as scenes from Colombo, Sri Lanka, during the country’s 2022 protests. It says the video shows demonstrators inside the Presidential Secretariat, also known as the Old Parliament building, after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled amid the economic crisis. (S1) To investigate the footage’s origin, the review says it extracted keyframes from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search. That search found the same video uploaded to YouTube on 09 July 2022; the review describes it as showing protesters taking over Sri Lanka’s old parliament building during the protests. It also reports that other national and international media covered demonstrators at the Presidential Secretariat in Colombo on that date. (S1) The review distinguishes those 2022 protest scenes from the observance claimed in the post. It notes that people from tribal communities celebrated the Indigenous Peoples’ Day on 09 August 2023, but says the viral footage originated more than a year earlier in Sri Lanka. Thus, the event date and location attributed to the video in the claim do not match the provenance described by the investigation. (S1)

FACTLYCulture & entertainment

Aruna Jain, a MasterChef India contestant, refused to cook an egg-based dish and withdrew from the 25 Lakh Price race

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The post said that Aruna Jain rejected 25 lakh rupees and withdrew from the competition after refusing to cook an egg-based dish. The review examined the incident in Season 7, Episode 24 of MasterChef India, where contestants were asked to prepare an egg dish. It reports that Aruna Vijay, who belongs to the Jain community, declined to cook one because of her faith-based principles and gave up her immunity pin. The review describes checking related news coverage and Sony Entertainment Television’s official YouTube channel, SET India. It says the episode showed Aruna refusing to cook an egg dish and giving away the pin. The review also cites a now-deleted tweet in which she wrote that she gave up the immunity pin for an egg and was proud to be Jain. The key distinction is what the pin did: according to the review, it protected a contestant from elimination. Giving it up therefore meant losing that protection, not withdrawing from the competition or rejecting the prize money. The review says Aruna continued in the contest until the final four, where she was eliminated. That later participation contradicts the post’s claim that she withdrew.

dpaCulture & entertainment

Kinderen kunnen nu spelen met een Barbie Ouijabord.

Publisher’s rating: Het Ouijabord werd gemaakt door een Mexicaanse Barbiefan en is niet echt speelgoed dat werd uitgebracht door Mattel, de eigenaar van Barbie. Dat bevestigde Mattel aan dpa.

The claim suggests that children can now play with a Barbie Ouija board. The investigation checked whether the board circulating on social media was a toy released by Mattel, Barbie’s owner, or an independently made item. It reports that Mattel confirmed the board was not an official Mattel or Barbie product. That distinction matters: the image showed a Barbie-themed board, but did not establish that it was a toy Mattel sold for children. To trace the image, the investigators used a reverse image search. They report that it led to Mexican artist and Barbie fan Servando Hernández, whose Instagram post identified the board with the hashtag “#notanofficialproduct.” The report also says Hernández had made the board himself; when Snopes spoke with him in 2021, he described creating Barbie scenes and placing her in situations or with objects she would not normally encounter. The article says Hernández offered a version through his Etsy shop, but describes those boards as sized for Barbie dolls rather than people. So the evidence supports a narrower conclusion than the claim’s wording might suggest: an independently created Barbie-themed board existed and could be made for dolls, but the pictured item was not an official Mattel toy, and the report does not establish that children could buy it as a playable, human-sized Barbie product.