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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Politics & government fact checks

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

12,751 published reviews in this topic

FACTLYPolitics & government

Ratan Tata’s made a statement about linking liquor sale to Aadhaar card

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a social-media post attributing to Ratan Tata a proposal to sell liquor through Aadhaar and stop food subsidies for people who buy alcohol. FACTLY says it checked whether he had made the statement on his official social-media accounts and reports that it found no such statement on his Twitter or Instagram. It also notes that it found no mainstream-media reports of him making the remark: “If Ratan Tata had made such a statement, several mainstream media outlets would have published articles reporting the same, but we could not find any.” The review’s central evidence is a clarification attributed to Tata himself. FACTLY reports that news outlets said he addressed the attribution in an Instagram Story in September 2021, calling it fake news and denying that he had made the statement. The review adds that the screenshot Tata shared in that Story was the same as the viral post. On that basis, FACTLY concludes that he did not make the statement.

Factcrescendo Sri LankaPolitics & government

A Tweet Attributed To Indian External Affairs Minister On India’s Willingness To Proclaim Sri Lanka As A State Of India!

Publisher’s rating: False

The review examined a WhatsApp-forwarded image purporting to show Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar offering to help Sri Lanka with its economic problems on condition that Sri Lankans agree to their country becoming an Indian state. The review situates the claim amid Sri Lanka’s economic and political crisis and India’s assistance, including credit and financial help for fuel. It reports that the purported tweet also promised help with food and fertilizer and future issues. The review concludes that the image was fabricated and that Jaishankar did not express the claimed position. To check whether the post was genuine, the investigators searched Jaishankar’s official Twitter account and looked for archived versions of the alleged tweet; they found neither. They also contacted the Indian High Commissioner’s Office in Sri Lanka, which denied the message. The review further identified grammatical errors in the image and tested whether its displayed wording could fit within Twitter’s stated 280-character limit. It reports that the full text could not fit, providing another reason to treat the image as manipulated. The review distinguishes real Indian assistance to Sri Lanka from the alleged tweet: it mentions an additional $500 million in assistance for the fuel crisis, but says its review of related reports and Jaishankar’s bilateral discussions found no statement matching the viral message. Its conclusion is specifically about the purported image and the attribution of that offer to Jaishankar.

dpaPolitics & government

Dit is een BBC-tweet met een quote van Macron.

Publisher’s rating: Deze tweet is nep en niet van de BBC. Er is ook geen enkele aanwijzing dat Macron dit ooit heeft gezegd.

The claim concerns a screenshot of a purported BBC tweet, dated 11 April 2022, that attributes to French President Emmanuel Macron a promise that Europe should prepare to receive 60 million refugees from Africa and the Middle East. The review says the tweet linked that alleged promise to economic fallout in Africa from sanctions against Russia. It concludes that the screenshot is fabricated and that there is no evidence Macron made the statement. The review describes checking the BBC World account’s timeline: it found no such post on 11 April. It did find another tweet from that day using the same photograph of Macron, but that post was a general analysis of French election campaigns, not a statement about refugees. Thus, the date and image in the screenshot do not establish that BBC published the alleged quote. The review gives additional reasons to doubt the screenshot: its text reportedly contains 301 characters, above the stated 280-character limit for a tweet, and it shows a shadow behind the letters that the review says is absent from genuine tweets. It also reports that BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh called the tweet fake and said Macron had not said anything similar; the BBC News Press Team retweeted his post. The review reports no evidence that Macron made the attributed statement.

Factcrescendo Sri LankaPolitics & government

අනුර – සජිත් දෙදෙනාත් පැන්ඩෝරා පේපර්ස් වලට ඇතුළත්ද ?

Publisher’s rating: False

The claim concerned a social-media post that placed Sajith Premadasa and Anura Kumara Dissanayake in a supposed “Pandora billionaires 200” list, at positions 23 and 12 respectively. The review identifies the two men as the opposition leader and the National People’s Power leader, and says the post circulated alongside their photographs. It also explains that the image presented a blurred list of names. This establishes what allegation the review investigated, rather than a general question about offshore records. [S1]