Analysis

Does a photo shared on social media during the May 22, 2023, attack on the Russian region of Belgorod by two paramilitary groups show the wife of the region's governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, at an "international airport" with her "belongings"? No, that's not true: This photo was distributed by the Russian airline Azur Air at least three months before these groups…

Does a video of a long convoy of cars show residents of Belgorod, Russia evacuating their homes after Russian paramilitary groups fighting for Ukraine crossed the Russian-Ukraine border on May 22, 2023, and attacked the Belgorod region? No, that's not true: Lead Stories compared the video footage with photos of Belgorod in Google's Street View and found that the cars…

So you've probably read all those warnings from pundits, academics and researchers about how generative AI tools like ChatGPT are going to impact disinformation and fact checking. And you may have even seen some recent examples of a deep-faked pope in a puffer jacket or Donald Trump being arrested. But let me tell you the story of a real-life example…

As you could tell by the date, this was an April Fools' joke and we didn't really launch a mad conspiracy-spewing AI bot. Hope you enjoyed it! Colorado Springs - Award-winning fact checking organization Lead Stories is proud to announce the launch of FactGPT, the world's first AI-powered fact checking chatbot. Combining the power of Lead Stories' database of existing…

This article lays out the evidence Alan Gray (CEO of alternative news site NewsBlaze) is quite likely the key person behind the anonymously published website named Real Science hosted on the domain name goodsciencing.com. It was recently in the news because it was the source for some spectacular (but wrong) statistics about athletes suffering cardiac arrests (here's our fact…

The year is almost over, so it is good to look back. First, the numbers, as of December 15, 2022. This year we have published 1,555 fact checks in English (so far ...) 283 fact checks about COVID misinformation; 244 debunks of Russian propaganda and false claims about the invasion of Ukraine; 140 debunks of false claims about election fraud,…

The celebrity death hoax has long been a clickbait staple, but recently one network has taken it to extremes, using scores of websites to host its content and an automated army of bots to push the links into Facebook groups. Many Facebook users and group administrators have noticed a sharp increase in spam postings of false death hoaxes. Examples of…

Is the new Russian website "War on Fakes" a real and reliable fact checking website run by "experts and journalists"? We have questions. The site appeared to spring up almost overnight in early March 2022 in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and started publishing articles in several languages meant to look like fact checks, often accompanied with…

Colorado Springs - In response to the escalating events and the outbreak of a war between Russia and Ukraine at the end of February 2022 Lead Stories today announces the launch of Russian and Ukrainian versions of its award-winning fact checking website leadstories.com The new sites are located at russian.leadstories.com and ukrainian.leadstories.com and are staffed by veteran journalists fluent in…

On November 10, 2021, Lead Stories published a fact check about an article published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on November 2, 2021. In response, the BMJ published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg on December 17, 2021, calling our fact check "inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible." We addressed their concerns in a December 18, 2021, article, going over their…

Ms. Susan Wojcicki, It's been almost two years since the COVID-19 pandemic started. The world has seen time and time again how destructive disinformation and misinformation can be for social harmony, democracy, and public health; too many lives and livelihoods have been ruined, and far too many people have lost loved ones to disinformation. As an international network of fact-checking…

The British Medical Journal published an open letter on December 17, 2021 (archived here) taking issue with a Lead Stories fact check. Our response is below (UPDATE: also see "Context Matters: Why Lead Stories Fact Checked The BMJ"): It is ironic to read that BMJ.com objects to the headline on Lead Stories' fact check of a BMJ.com article when the…

Wanted for Defamation On November 5, 2021, a website named Conservative Beaver published a false story about the CEO of Pfizer being arrested for fraud. It wasn't the first false story published by the website and it wouldn't be the last: Only a few days later the site falsely claimed Myriam Bourla (the wife of Pfizer's CEO Albert Bourla) died…

Did the materials released by Mike Lindell at his Cyber Symposium meet evidentiary standards of relevance, proof of origin, chain-of-secure-custody and reproducibility that online security experts say would be needed to take seriously his claim that he holds massive data files showing the 2020 election was stolen by hackers? No, that's not true. Lead Stories asked for the information necessary…

After Mike Lindell's appearance on the April 28, 2021, "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" show, Lead Stories published a story titled "Attention Mike Lindell: What You May Want To Know About The 'Data' Used In Your Stolen Election Claims" that traced some of the data used in Lindell's movies to a man named Dennis L. Montgomery. Lindell has been quite vague on…

Will the materials Mike Lindell releases at his Cyber Symposium meet evidentiary standards of authenticity to support his claim the 2020 election was stolen? Here's how Lead Stories will test the data: By asking the questions we sent to him August 3, 2021. Lead Stories will tune into the symposium to ask the questions we have been asking since he…

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has produced four video documentaries so far, all claiming to show evidence of fraud in the November 2020 election. Lead Stories has previously looked into these videos here, here, here and here and found there were serious issues with the data and evidence that was presented in them. Lindell even admitted to us that some of…

The Lead Stories staff was just awarded a 2020 Sigma Delta Chi Award by The Society of Professional Journalists for our Covid-19 fact checking. We are very happy and honored to have been chosen and will strive to continue our fact checking on Covid-19 related stories. As we went into 2020 we fully expected we would be spending most of…

Summary: Mike Lindell's video series allegedly proving fraud in the November 2020 elections relies heavily on digital evidence in the form of files and animations that Lindell claims show attacks on the U.S. election infrastructure coming from China and other places. Lindell has never acknowledged where these files and animations came from. Lead Stories traced them back to a website…

At Lead Stories we are always open to trying out new technologies and methods when it comes to fact checking. The only way to truly know if something works or not is to try it out. Which is why we are happy to announce we have chosen to participate in a new initiative that seeks to explore if trading representations…