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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

Washington PostPolitics & government

“There were two reasons that we held up the aid. We talked about this at some length. The first one was the rampant corruption in Ukraine. Ukraine — by the way, Chris, it’s so bad in Ukraine that in 2014, Congress passed a law making it, making us, requiring us, to make sure that corruption was moving in the right direction. So, corruption is a big deal, everyone knows it. The president was also concerned about whether or not other nations, specifically European nations, were helping with foreign aid to the Ukraine as well.”

Publisher’s rating: Four Pinocchios

FACTLYPolitics & government

Asaduddin Owaisi dancing in celebration of the death of Kamlesh Tiwari.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a video circulated as showing AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi dancing to celebrate the death of Hindu Mahasabha leader Kamlesh Tiwari. The review traced the footage to a dance step Owaisi performed after an election rally at Paithan Gate in Aurangabad. Its account identifies the rally as taking place on October 17, 2019, and quotes ANI’s description of the same event as “a dance step after the end of his rally.” The chronology rules out the video’s claimed context: Tiwari was murdered on October 18, 2019, the day after Owaisi’s rally. The footage therefore shows an event that preceded Tiwari’s death, not a celebration of it. The review describes how it checked the video’s provenance. It searched for the purported Sudarshan News report and did not find it; a search for Owaisi dancing led to a Zee News video uploaded on October 18, which carried an ANI watermark. The review then found the same footage in an ANI tweet identifying the rally and its October 17 date. This evidence links the circulating footage to the earlier rally and contradicts the post’s description.

NewtralPolitics & government

Un mensaje que reivindica las marchas de pensionistas en Madrid usa una foto de 2018 hecha en Bilbao

Publisher’s rating: Engañoso

The review examined a Facebook post that presented a photograph of a large pensioners’ demonstration as having been taken in Madrid on 17 October. The post’s accompanying text described the people pictured as pensioners still fighting for their cause. The review found that the photograph was not from that Madrid event: it showed a demonstration in Bilbao in 2018. To check the image’s provenance, the review says it used a reverse-image search on Google and located the photograph in coverage by El Español and Naiz. Those reports identified the scene as a 17 March 2018 demonstration in Bilbao calling for dignified pensions. The review also credits the circulating photograph to Luis Tejido of the Efe agency. The post’s attribution was misleading, but there was a separate pensioners’ demonstration in Madrid on 16 October 2019. The review reports that, according to figures from Madrid’s Government Delegation cited by Efe, nearly 8,000 demonstrators from across Spain gathered in front of the Congress of Deputies to call for pensions to be legally tied to the Consumer Price Index. That separate event does not make the Bilbao photograph a picture of the Madrid march.