Misinformation Watch

Almost immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic began, people speculated about how it started. Most of this focused on China, where the pandemic began, and specifically on the city of Wuhan.

The New York Times reported Musk met with Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. days after the 2024 presidential election.

A graph from ZeroHedge (Lean Right bias) posted on X circulated to tens of millions of people, purporting that in the 2012, 2016, and 2024 presidential elections, Democrats only received about 66 million votes in each presidential election, but received 81 million votes in 2020. The graph is misleading and implies the 2024 vote count is complete, which it’s not.

A graph from ZeroHedge (Lean Right bias) posted on X circulated to tens of millions of people, purporting that in the 2012, 2016, and 2024 presidential elections, Democrats only received about 66 million votes in each presidential election, but received 81 million votes in 2020. The graph is misleading and implies the 2024 vote count is complete, which it’s not.

Elon Musk and Republican groups funded ads pretending to support Harris, but featuring fake policy positions. That's bad for voters and democracy.

Harris has said she worked at McDonald's while she was in college. Fact checkers haven't been able to confirm her claim.

Hurricane Helene and FEMA’s response to it have sparked misleading narratives about FEMA’s funding, its priorities and management, weather control and lithium mining.

With Israel and Hamas at war, conflicting, confusing, and misinformed reports are spreading quickly. Here are some major storylines that need a bit of clarification.

ProPublica tied the deaths of two women in Georgia to an abortion-restricting state law. Was this accurate?

X (formerly Twitter) has a relatively new feature that generates headlines and summaries on “trending” stories. But it’s the feature itself that’s in the headlines recently – for spreading misinformation.