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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

Fact CrescendoPolitics & government

Claim: Vaiko not challenged that he will commit suicide if India name changed into Bharat

Publisher’s rating: False

The claim concerned a social-media post saying that Vaiko would take his own life if India’s name were changed to Bharat. Fact Crescendo says it investigated whether Vaiko had actually made that statement, rather than whether a name change was being proposed. It reports that the post was shared widely and that the claim was checked against Vaiko’s statement and related material published by his party’s media outlet. [S1]

NewtralPolitics & government

George Soros está reclutando anarquistas profesionales

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim arose from a poster circulated online that purported to offer $200 to anyone willing to “be a professional anarchist,” with an email address and phone number for applicants. The review says the poster was attributed to the Open Society Foundations and used to connect George Soros to protests in the United States following George Floyd’s killing. It describes the image as circulating from late May, first in English and later with Spanish-language text. The review reports that the poster did not come from the foundation and that the allegation that Soros was paying protesters was false. (S1: “Circula por redes sociales un cartel creado supuestamente por la Fundación Open Society que proporciona una dirección de correo electrónico y un número de teléfono a todo aquel que quiera ‘ser un anarquista profesional’ a cambio de 200 dólares.”; “La imagen lleva compartiéndose desde finales de mayo, primero en inglés y ahora acompañada de textos en español que vinculan al magnate al mando de Open Society, George Soros, con las protestas producidas en Estados Unidos por el asesinato de George Floyd.”) As evidence, the review cites a statement by the Open Society Foundations distancing itself from the poster and denying that the foundation or its founder paid people to protest. The statement framed the protests as expressions of concern about Floyd’s death and police brutality, rather than actions funded by the foundation. The review also notes that the foundation viewed the claim as an attempt to discredit peaceful protest. (S1: “En un comunicado, la Fundación Open Society se ha desmarcado del escrito en este cartel y de tener siquiera algo que ver con las protestas espontáneas surgidas a raíz del asesinato de Floyd por parte de un policía”; “Open Society recalca que su fundador, George Soros, tampoco paga a nadie por manifestarse”) The poster also appeared to link the offer to the Thurston County Democrats: its contact email used the domain thurstoncountydemocrats.org, while the phone number was real. The review says the county party denied involvement on Facebook and reported receiving calls asking about Soros and other conspiracy claims. These details distinguish the use of a real phone number and a party-related domain from evidence that either the party or the foundation created or supported the recruitment offer. (S1: “La dirección de correo que aparece como contacto tiene como dominio thurstoncountydemocrats.org, buscando vincular este falso anuncio también con el partido demócrata, en concreto con los Demócratas del condado de Thurston, algo que el partido lo ha negado rotundamente en su página de Facebook.”; “Aunque el dominio del email no es exactamente el del partido, el número de teléfono si es real.”)

FACTLYPolitics & government

The government of India has not launched the ‘Pradhan Mantri Dhan Laxmi Yojana 2020’ scheme for women aged between 18 and 55 years

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The review examines a social-media post claiming that the Government of India launched the “Pradhan Mantri Dhan Laxmi Yojana 2020” as part of its Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative. According to the review, the post promised direct transfers to women aged 18–55 who applied. These details identify the specific scheme and claim being checked, rather than a different women’s-benefit programme. [S1: “A post regarding a scheme, ‘Pradhan Mantri Dhan Laxmi Yojana 2020’, is being shared widely on social media with the claim that the scheme provides monetary benefits to women aged between 18 and 55 years. In the post, it is mentioned that the scheme was launched by the Government of India as part of its ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ initiative. Also, it is stated that the government will transfer money directly to the accounts of the women who apply for the scheme.”] The review describes several checks for evidence that the scheme existed: it reports finding no scheme with that name on the Women and Child Development Ministry website cited in the post, on the government’s Direct Benefit Transfer website, or on other government portals. It also says it found no media reports about such a scheme’s launch. These are the review’s reported search results; the excerpt does not provide a date range, search terms, or archived copies of the pages consulted. [S1: “When one visits the website given in the post (https://wcd.nic.in/schemes/dhanalakshmi), no scheme with that name was found. Also, when searched on the ‘Direct Benefit Transfer’ website of the Government of India, there is no scheme with that name. Information about that scheme wasn’t found in any other government portal. Moreover, there are no media reports regarding the scheme.”] As additional support, the review reports that the Press Information Bureau had tweeted that there was no such Central government scheme and that the viral message was fake. Taken together, the searches described and the reported PIB statement support the review’s conclusion that the named scheme and the claimed benefit were not government schemes. The excerpt does not reproduce the PIB tweet or provide its date, so those details cannot be independently assessed from the supplied text. [S1: “Also, the ‘Press Information Bureau (PIB)’ has tweeted saying that there is no such Central government scheme and the viral message is fake.”]

Fact CrescendoPolitics & government

Claim: Old pictures of Tamil Nadu CM Edappadi Palaniswami being shared viral

Publisher’s rating: False

The review examined a photo shared as showing Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami at the Mettur Dam opening, apparently amid a crowd without social distancing. The accompanying post questioned why masks and distancing were supposedly unnecessary for him. The review says the dam was opened on June 12, 2020, and that photographs from that event showed Palaniswami wearing a mask and people spaced apart. It therefore investigated whether the crowded image actually came from that year’s ceremony. (S1) The review describes checking the image’s history through reverse-image search. It says the image had appeared in Dinakaran and Kumudam coverage dated June 12, 2020, but that those publications did not identify it as an old file photo. The review also notes that former Salem district collector Rohini appeared in the crowded image, and reasons that her later transfers made her presence at a Salem event in 2020 implausible. It reports finding that Times of India and other outlets had used the image in 2018. (S1) On that basis, the review concludes that the image being circulated as evidence of a distancing lapse at the 2020 Mettur Dam opening was from 2018 instead. Its finding concerns the image’s date and the misleading attribution to the 2020 ceremony; the supplied excerpt does not provide further detail about the 2018 event. (S1)

Fact CrescendoPolitics & government

ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်အတွက် နေပြည်တော်မှာ မြေ ၄ ဒသမ ၄ ဧကချထားပေးတယ်

Publisher’s rating: False

The review examined a social-media post alleging that land plots had been allocated to Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior officials. It says the post listed plot numbers and areas for 16 people, including the president, vice presidents, ministers and Naypyidaw Council officials. The specific allegation addressed was that 4.4 acres in Naypyidaw had been allocated to Aung San Suu Kyi. [S1: “ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်အပါအဝင် အစိုးရအဖွဲ့ဝင်ဝန်ကြီးတွေအတွက် မြေကွက်တွေ ချထားပေးတယ်ဆိုတဲ့ ပို့စ်တစ်ခု လူမှုကွန်ယက်သုံးစွဲသူတွေအကြားမှာ ပျံ့နှံ့ခဲ့ပါတယ်။”] [S1: “ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည် အတွက်နေပြည်တော်မှာ မြေ ၄ ဒသမ ၄ ဧကချထားပေးတယ်ဆိုတဲ့သတင်းမှား”] To check the allegation, the review reports that Naypyidaw Council officials held a press briefing at the Ministry of Information on June 12. It cites the council’s permanent secretary, U Myo Aung, as saying that no land plot in the council territory had been allocated in Aung San Suu Kyi’s name. [S1: “ဇွန် ၁၂ ရက်က ပြန်ကြားရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာနမှာ နေပြည်တော်ကောင်စီတာဝန်ရှိသူတွေ သတင်းစာရှင်းလင်းပွဲလုပ်ခဲ့ တာတွေ့ရပါတယ်။”] [S1: “နေပြည်တော်ကောင်စီ အမြဲတမ်း အတွင်းဝန် ဦးမျိုးအောင်က ပြောဆိုခဲ့တာကို”] The review also cites reporting by 7Day about land development behind the Max Myanmar Hotel. According to the excerpt, Naypyidaw Deputy Mayor U Ye Min Oo described it as a housing project and said no one had yet been assigned or sold a place there. The review concludes that the specific allocation story was false; the excerpt does not provide a plot document or other evidence showing an allocation to Suu Kyi. [S1: “အဆင့်မြင့်အိမ်ရာ စီမံကိန်းဖြစ်ပြီး လက်ရှိအချိန်ထိ မည်သူကိုမျှ နေရာချပေးခြင်း၊ ရောင်းချခြင်း မရှိသေးကြောင်း နေပြည်တော် ဒုတိယမြို့တော်ဝန် ဦးရဲမင်းဦးက ပြောကြားခဲ့ဆိုပြီး 7day သတင်းဌာနက ရေးသားထားတာတွေ့ရပါတယ်။”]

Fact CrescendoPolitics & government

Barack Obama tossed away a gift from Melania Trump in protest of George Floyd's death

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

Fact Crescendo investigated a viral video said to show Barack Obama throwing away a gift from Donald Trump to protest Trump’s racist behavior amid the anti-racism demonstrations following George Floyd’s death. The review says its examination found that the video instead shows a gift being passed along during the Obamas’ welcome of the newly elected Donald and Melania Trump. In the footage, Melania gives a blue box to Michelle Obama; Barack then takes it and hands it to a person standing behind him. The review reports that the video does not show him throwing the gift away. To check the clip, the publisher says it noticed CNN’s logo, searched for the video using different search terms, and found it had been uploaded on January 20, 2017. It also pointed to Ruptly’s live coverage of the event from that date. The clearer footage, according to the review, shows Obama entering with the gift at 7 minutes 12 seconds and handing it to a staff member. The publisher concludes that the viral segment was technically edited to make it appear that he discarded the gift, and that the old footage was unrelated to the later anti-racism demonstrations.