If someone becomes sick or dies after getting a COVID-19 vaccine, is the shot necessarily to blame? No, that's not true: It is statistically inevitable that some people will get sick and die after getting the shot, for reasons that are unrelated to their body's response to the vaccine. People die every day of everything from heart attacks to cancer.…

Several people reported to us that Facebook erroneously added a "Missing Context" warning notice to posts wishing people a "Merry Christmas". The notice included a link to our fact check about certain items that were supposedly in the "Stimulus Bill". We did not flag any of these posts as part of our work in Facebook's Third Party Fact Checking Partnership.…

Abbie Richards, a climate science student in the Netherlands, was looking with bewilderment at the state of her home country of the United States. So many conspiracy theories echoing, particularly ahead of the election. Struggling to wrangle all of them for a paper, she made a chart naming some 100 conspiracies dominating the social media world to, she hoped, make…

Time for a change Perceptive readers (do we have any other ones?) probably noticed the little red flashes above our fact checking articles have changed this morning. They now read "Fact Check" instead of "Hoax Alert". This change was long overdue but we finally found the time to make it. For the longest time "Hoax Alert" has been the name…

The project, FactChat, will lead to the creation of a WhatsApp chatbot and two Spanish-language fact-checking units. ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (Sept. 18, 2020) -- Led by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute, FactChat is the first collaborative project to unite 10 U.S. fact-checking organizations with two major Spanish-language news broadcasters to fight mis/disinformation during a presidential campaign.…

After Lead Stories fact checked a story by The National Pulse they published an article accusing us of bias in favor of the Democrats after first quietly correcting their story. Several of the accusations are blatantly false, for example that Lead Stories Co-Founder and Chairman Perry Sanders would be a "devout Democrat". He is a registered Independent who has…

Poynter's International Fact-Checking Network led the creation of the chatbot to make its database of more than 4,000 COVID-19 hoaxes easy and accessible to people around the world. ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (May 4, 2020) -- The Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) today launches a chatbot on WhatsApp to connect its millions of users with the translated work of more…

Traditionally, on the day after April Fools Day we celebrate International Fact-Checking Day. This year marks the fourth time this day has been organized, thanks to the fine people at the IFCN. There is a special website for the occasion, check it out here. There is a fun quiz too to test your skill at spotting hoaxes. Also, have a…

Two weeks before strict nationwide coronavirus lockdown measures were announced in Britain, Abbie had already been practicing the recommended social distancing. In her flat in the southwest of England, she had plenty of projects in the works and was coping quite well in isolation. She worked on some paintings, took photos of her favorite subject - books. She made some…

Welcome to the all-new and improved leadstories.com. After five years of the same old design, we decided it was time for a new look. We will, of course, continue to debunk and fact check the latest rumors, falsehoods and questionable memes making the rounds on the internet. But we will be doing it on a new and shiny website. Don't…

Facebook users have been seeing some strange headlines lately, thanks largely to a clickbaiter from Pakistan. "It's Official: Fox Information Terminates Decide Pirro's Contract" There is a large network of websites using political content to draw an audience to the sites where some dubious advertising techniques are being employed. All of the content published on these websites is lifted from…

Editor's Note by Lead Stories Editor-in-Chief Alan Duke: Three days after a virtual apocalypse wiped out hundreds of fake people used to run a foreign pro-Trump network on Facebook, we found signs of life among a few dozen surviving profiles. Their creators in Vietnam appeared to be revising their identities and assigning them new duties to support a handful of…

Just days after Lead Stories revealed hundreds of "fake faces" used to mask a Vietnamese-based network of Facebook profiles and groups promoting political content on American timelines, those "people who do not exist" vanished from the social platform. Facebook announced on December 20, 2019, that it took TheBL.com network down for "engaging in foreign and government interference." Hours after they…

EDITORS NOTE: Meet Carolina Chaney. Take a good look at her Facebook profile photo. Maybe she looks like your kid's math teacher or your doctor. Privacy settings block us from seeing anything about her, but we do see she is one of 11 administrators of the "Trump - 2020 KAG!#" Facebook group. Carolina started in that role on Monday,…

Earlier this week Lead Stories already reported that Clint Eastwood was NOT dead, despite what a YouTube video was claiming: Fake News: Clint Eastwood is NOT Dead | Lead Stories Hoax Alert Did Clint Eastwood recently die? No, that is not true: It is a celebrity death hoax. The "Dirty Harry" actor is alive and well as of September 1,…

A viral video that was digitally altered to make it appear that U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was slurring her words and drunk has raised questions about what social platforms can do to limit fake content's spread. Since Lead Stories was the first of Facebook's 3rd-party fact checkers to flag the faked video, we can now share how effective our…

Lead Stories is happy to support Fact-Checking Day 2019! ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (April 2, 2019) - In most of the world, April 1 is a day for fools. April 2is a day for facts. Today is International Fact-Checking Day, and the Poynter Institute'sInternational Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) will once again coordinate activities and amplifyresources that empower global citizens of all ages…

Update: Yes, of course this was an April Fools joke :-) For years we here at Lead Stories have put the term "F*ke N*ws" in every headline but it is time to put a stop to the practice. For a long time academic experts like Claire Wardle have argued against using the phrase because it simply covers too many meanings…

Hoaxes know no borders, especially in Europe. That's why the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) is proud to announce the launch of FactCheckEU, a collaborative effort from 19 European fact-checking outlets to tackle disinformation and hoaxes, ahead of the 2019 European parliamentary elections in May. FactCheckEU is available at factcheckeu.info. Our work will be shared in 10 different languages, and everything…

Things used to be very simple and clear-cut here at Lead Stories. We used our Trendolizer engine to look for things that were trending online that were not true (but which seemed to be believed by many people anyway). Then we would write an article explaining why that thing was not true and we would publish it. People wondering if…