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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

Video of protest against CAA and NRC in Gulbarga.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim was that a video showed a protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens in Gulbarga. FACTLY reports that the video instead shows an event in Kerala: Samastha’s 90th Anniversary Conference. The review notes that protests did occur in Gulbarga, but says the video being shared as evidence of them was old footage from Kerala. To trace the footage, the investigators searched screenshots using Yandex Reverse Image Search and found similar YouTube videos, including one titled “Mailadiyal Samastha 90th at Alleppey conference.” They also noticed an SKICR TV logo in the circulated clip and searched that channel. The review says they found a recording of the event streamed live on 14 February 2016, with visuals matching the circulated video. The review gives a second trace of the same footage: a Facebook user named Zakariya Bin Abdulla posted it on 15 December 2019, and had also posted the same video with different audio on 16 February 2016. The review further cites a December 2015 article in The Hindu describing the Samastha anniversary celebration’s closing event in Alappuzha, Kerala, from 11 to 14 February 2016. Together, the matching visuals and earlier posts support the conclusion that the clip was recirculated with different audio and a false description of its location and event.

Fact CrescendoPolitics & government

Claim: Barkha Dutt met Imran Khan recently

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

Fact Crescendo investigated posts presenting photos of Barkha Dutt with Imran Khan and with Jamia Millia Islamia students, and framing the people pictured as Islamist rioters. The claim relevant here is that Dutt had met Imran Khan recently. The review says it checked when the image was taken, rather than treating the post’s presentation as proof of a recent encounter. The review reports that a reverse-image search found Dutt’s original Twitter post for the Imran Khan photograph. In that post, she described interviewing Khan with fellow journalist Suhasini Haidar and presented the image as a memory. The review dates Dutt’s post to August 12, 2018, and notes that Khan became Pakistan’s prime minister on August 18, 2018. This places the pictured interview before he took office, not at a recent meeting with him as prime minister. The separate Jamia image also had a different context: the review says Dutt posted it after interviewing students Ladeeda Farzana and Ayesha Renna, who had been seen in a viral video during the December 2019 protests. It concludes that the posts misleadingly combined these images and falsely labelled the people shown as rioters or terrorists. Its finding about the Imran Khan photograph rests on the earlier post and chronology, not on the later Jamia encounter.

NewtralPolitics & government

ERC apoyó con sus votos todos los reales decretos del Gobierno

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The statement under review was made by PSOE spokesperson Adriana Lastra at a press conference in Congress on 16 December. She said that ERC had supported all the government’s royal decree-laws. The review clarifies that the claim concerns decree-laws, which take effect after approval by the Council of Ministers but must then be confirmed by Congress within 30 days. To check the claim, the review examined how ERC voted on decree-laws before and after the April 2019 election, drawing on the Congress’s parliamentary initiatives search tool. Before the election, the government submitted 35 decree-laws to the full Congress or its Permanent Deputation. ERC voted in favour of 28, but voted against two and abstained on five. After the election, ERC supported three of seven more decree-laws; it opposed one and was absent for a sitting on 22 October at which three others were considered. Across the 42 decree-laws counted, the review found that ERC did not vote “yes” on 11. The record therefore contradicts the absolute claim that the party supported all of them with its votes. The review also notes that Lastra’s party had not responded to its request for comment at the time of publication.

FACTLYPolitics & government

Sonia Gandhi in a two-piece.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a Facebook collage whose left-hand image was presented as Sonia Gandhi in a two-piece. FACTLY reports that it investigated that specific image and identified the woman as actress Ursula Andress, not Gandhi. The review says the image is from the film *Dr. No* and describes its conclusion as based on tracing the image itself, rather than on a comparison of the two women.

The QuintPolitics & government

Man from peaceful community taking the country ahead

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim paired a video of a man throwing stones at a bus with the caption “Uncle from peaceful community taking the country ahead.” The Quint examined the video as it circulated during anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests and found that it did not show an incident connected to those protests. The video was an older clip from Udhna, Gujarat, where a crowd reacted after a bus driver hit a pedestrian in January 2017. To investigate, the review says it reverse-searched frames from the circulating video on Yandex. That search found a longer video uploaded by News24india India on 28 January 2017. In the longer footage, multiple people—not just the one person shown in the clipped version—throw stones at the bus. The review also searched Google for “udhna bus accident” and found a Divya Bhaskar report dated 28 January 2017 that included the longer video and described the same incident. The review reports that the pedestrian was severely injured and taken to Surat New Civil Hospital, and that the crowd pelted stones at the bus and driver. It says the driver fled after being beaten and police arrived and tried to calm the crowd. By omitting the longer footage and presenting the old local incident as current protest-related content with a communal framing, the post misrepresented both the setting and what the video showed.

Fact CrescendoPolitics & government

Claim: Picture of congress rally held at Delhi

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The review examined social-media posts that paired a crowd photograph with claims that 40 lakh people had attended a Congress rally in Delhi and that media outlets had concealed the event. One post identified the scene as a part of Ramlila Maidan during a protest led by Sonia Gandhi. The review distinguishes the rally itself from the image and the allegation about coverage: it says Congress held a large “Save India” rally in Delhi on December 14, and that Tamil and English outlets reported on it, contrary to the posts’ claim of a media blackout. To check the photograph’s provenance, the review says it ran the image through a reverse-image search. It found the same image posted on March 26, 2019, on a Facebook account belonging to someone associated with Congress, and also located earlier March 23 posts by another user and by Priyanka Chaturvedi. The review reports that Chaturvedi’s post identified the location as Malda, and that a commenter replied with evidence alleging the image was photoshopped. It does not provide details of that commenter’s evidence in the excerpt. The review concludes that the image was not taken at the December Delhi rally, while the claim that Tamil media suppressed reporting about the rally was contradicted by its account of coverage. Its conclusion therefore addresses both the image’s attribution and the posts’ allegation about news coverage, not whether the rally occurred.