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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Economy & business fact checks

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

7,096 published reviews in this topic

Noticias TelemundoEconomy & business

Video muestra a una mujer llenando bolsas de gasolina ante una posible escasez de combustible por el cierre de un oleoducto en Estados Unidos en mayo de 2021.

Publisher’s rating: Engañoso

The claim concerns a video of a woman filling plastic bags with gasoline, presented as footage of fuel hoarding during the Colonial Pipeline shutdown in May 2021. The review says the video is genuine, but that its timing and connection to the shutdown are misrepresented: it had appeared more than a year earlier and was not related to the pipeline.

BBC Reality CheckEconomy & business

"The three months before I got here, our country was creating roughly 60,000 jobs a month... we've been creating on average 500,000 jobs per month"

Publisher’s rating: This is true, although the latest job numbers for April were less than predicted, when just 266,000 jobs were added.

The BBC checked Biden’s comparison of roughly 60,000 monthly jobs before he took office with an average of 500,000 per month afterward. Its account says job growth in the final few months of the Trump presidency averaged about 63,000 a month. Under Biden, it reports more than 530,000 jobs added in February and 770,000 in March, supporting the contrast in the claim. The review qualified that conclusion with April’s weaker-than-expected result: 266,000 jobs were added, fewer than economists had anticipated. It also noted that the economy was recovering from the pandemic downturn, and that the US still had more than eight million fewer jobs than when the pandemic began. Thus, the evidence supports the stated comparison while showing that the monthly pace varied and that the recovery remained incomplete.

dpaEconomy & business

Lidl offre 20 vélos électriques et tout le monde peut gagner le concours.

Publisher’s rating: Il s’agit d’une arnaque, confirmée par Lidl, qui met régulièrement en garde ses clients contre des messages promotionnels sur Facebook ne provenant pas de la page officielle de lamarque.

The review investigated a Facebook post illustrated with a bicycle photo and Lidl’s logo. The post said Lidl was running a contest, offering 20 electric bicycles, and that everyone could win; it linked to a questionnaire framed as a way to improve the company’s work. Lidl Belgium spokesperson Julien Wathieu told dpa that the contest was fraudulent and said a Lidl department would follow up to seek its removal from Facebook. The review also reports that a customer had flagged the contest over the weekend of May 8. The review describes several checks that undermined the offer’s credibility. The post directed users to atv-bike.online, which the review says was not a real company and was not listed in Belgium’s Crossroads Bank for Enterprises, the register of companies. Lidl’s spokesperson said the company would never ask contest participants for their bank details. The review therefore characterized the promotion as an attempt to obtain users’ personal and banking information, rather than a genuine Lidl giveaway. The distinction that matters is the source of the promotion: the review says Lidl warns customers about Facebook promotions that do not come from its official page. Its conclusion rests on Lidl’s direct response and the suspicious destination site, not simply on the fact that the post offered prizes. The supplied excerpt does not provide results of a technical examination of the link or report whether Facebook ultimately removed the post.

Fact CrescendoEconomy & business

Claim: DMK government not hiked milk price

Publisher’s rating: False

The claim concerned a May 2021 order that appeared to say the DMK government had raised milk prices by ₹6 before cutting them by ₹3. Fact Crescendo examined the social-media post, which included a government order, and compared it with a news report and the order’s wording. The review says the order was dated 7 May 2021 and refers back to a 2019 order for the earlier price increase. [S1] The post’s presentation left out that chronology, making the earlier increase look like a new one. The key distinction in the order is between a past increase and the change taking effect in May 2021. It says the 2019 order raised the retail selling price by ₹6 per litre; the 2021 decision then reduced the selling price from that level by ₹3 per litre, effective 16 May 2021. The review also quotes the order as specifying separate procurement-price increases in 2019: ₹4 per litre for cow’s milk and ₹6 for buffalo’s milk. Those procurement changes are distinct from the retail-price change at issue in the claim. [S1] As additional checks, the review reports contacting newly appointed Dairy Development Minister S. M. Nasar, who said the government had not raised milk prices after taking office and had instead ordered a reduction. It also says the review found no price-increase announcement on the Aavin website and reports that shops it contacted were still selling at the previous price. Together, the order’s chronology and these reported checks address the specific allegation that a fresh ₹6 retail increase occurred in May 2021. [S1]

maharat-newsEconomy & business

هل ستنخفض قيمة الدعم من 6 مليارات إلى 795 مليون؟!

Publisher’s rating: غير صحيح

The claim asks whether Lebanon’s proposed subsidy plan would cut support from $6 billion to $795 million. The review compares the figures in a draft proposal with those in the final proposal issued by the team of caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab on May 4, 2021. It says the final proposal set annual subsidy-rationalization costs at $1,195,647,059—not $795 million. The $795,647,059 figure did appear in an earlier draft, so it was not invented, but it did not describe the final proposal. The review also checks the related figures in journalist Omar Tamo’s tweet. It says the proposal kept annual flour support at $150 million, rather than the $170 million cited in the tweet, and reduced the annual medicines bill from $1.2 billion to $600 million, not $500 million. It distinguishes electricity support from these adjustments: the plan retained support for fuel oil to keep the state electricity company operating, rather than cutting the company’s transfers as the tweet’s comparison suggested. Thus, the $795 million amount was an earlier-draft figure, not the final plan’s annual cost. The review concludes that the tweet’s figures were inaccurate apart from its electricity-support amount, and notes that subsidy rationalization and the financing card were still proposals, expected to take effect at the beginning of June.