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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.

12,754 published reviews in this topic

FACTLYPolitics & government

Images of farmers protests claiming to be those from the latest protests against the farm bills

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The review examined social-media posts presenting several farmers’ protest images as photographs of the latest protests against three farm bills. It found that the images did not all have the same provenance: one showed a current protest, while the others depicted earlier protests on different occasions and issues. Thus, the claim that the collection showed the latest protests was misleading, rather than every image being old. To check the images, the review describes using reverse-image searches and then following the results to earlier posts, stock-image listings, news coverage, and a video. For the first image, it found a tweet identifying the scene as a 2018 New Delhi protest; the accompanying description says a farmer displayed the skulls of colleagues who had died by suicide. For the third, a news article showed the same scene from another angle, and a 2017 video identified it as a Tamil Nadu farmers’ protest at Jantar Mantar over relief related to the Cauvery drought. The second image was the exception. The review traced it to a stock-image listing and a matching image credited to Dipa Chakraborty/Pacific Press/Shutterstock, both dated 23 September 2020. The caption described farmers at a Trinamool Congress student-cell rally in Kolkata protesting the farm bills, so this image did relate to a current protest. The fourth image, by contrast, was traced to a 2018 post by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, which described a CPM-led farmers’ march in Maharashtra. The article’s image-by-image findings show why treating the whole set as current was inaccurate.

Telemundo-PolitifactPolitics & government

"Trump dijo que 'había gente muy buena en ambos lados', incluyendo a grupos de supremacistas blancos"

Publisher’s rating: Falta contexto

The claim concerns Joe Biden’s account of Donald Trump’s comments about the 2017 Charlottesville protests, made during the first presidential debate. The review says Biden’s statement was true but omitted context. It traces the remark to a press conference after the Virginia protests, where a reporter referred to neonazis arriving to protest and Trump responded that there were “very bad people” in the group, but also “very good people” on both sides. The review therefore supports that Trump made the quoted “very good people” remark in that setting. The omitted qualification matters: the review also reports that Trump said neonazis and white nationalists should be condemned during the same press conference. Its account thus presents both the remark Biden cited and additional comments that qualify the impression created by citing that remark alone. The excerpt does not establish that Trump said the “very good people” were themselves white supremacists; it describes his remarks as referring to people on both sides. The review’s stated basis for its assessment is that the quotation is accurate but incomplete in context.

FACTLYPolitics & government

Farmers in Haryana attacked a BJP leader in the wake of the recently passed agriculture-related bills

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a circulating video said to show farmers in Haryana attacking a BJP leader after the passage of agriculture-related bills. FACTLY’s review identifies the person in the footage as Raj Kumar Saini, Kurukshetra’s MP, and says the incident was an ink attack by four youngsters in 2016—not an attack connected to the farmers’ protests over the bills. The review describes how it checked the video: reverse image searches of screenshots led to a 2016 news video with the same visuals. Its description identified the footage as an ink attack on MP Saini. Searching for reports about an ink attack on Saini then led the review to news coverage stating that four youngsters attacked him, accusing him of fanning communal tensions in Haryana. That earlier incident’s date and reported motive undermine the post’s presentation of the footage as a recent attack by farmers in response to the bills. FACTLY also notes that such posts were being shared amid nationwide farmers’ protests, a setting that could make the old footage appear current, but concludes that the video was unrelated to those protests.

Deutsche Presse-AgenturPolitics & government

Seit Tagen kursieren im Internet Memes über angebliche Aussagen von US-Präsident Donald Trump über «Waldstädte» in Österreich und «explosive» oder «explodierende» Bäume. Nun wird behauptet, Trump habe «etwas ganz anderes» gesagt.

Publisher’s rating: Donald Trump hat nachweislich von «Waldstädten» gesprochen. Er äußerte sich auch mehrfach zu «explosiven» Bäumen; es gibt jedoch keinen Beleg dafür, dass er von «explodierenden Bäumen» sprach.