Hearst Television — one of our media partners — produced this fact-checking video segment featuring our article on President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

The segment aired on numerous local TV news stations owned and operated by Hearst. It examined Biden’s claims about job creation, inflation and wages, and deficit reduction. For more on these claims and others, see our full story, “FactChecking the State of the Union.”

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104. 

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FactCheck.org Science Editor Jessica McDonald fielded questions about second COVID-19 booster shots and the possible return of Philadelphia’s mask mandate in a recent interview that aired on several of that city’s iHeartRadio stations.

McDonald spoke with Loraine Ballard Morrill, host of the Philadelphia community affairs shows “What’s Going On” and “Insight,” to discuss why the city was warning that it might reinstate its indoor mask mandate and to explain what’s known about fourth doses of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. The Food and Drug Administration authorized the shots for people 50 years and older at the end of March. 

The episodes featuring FactCheck.org aired on April 10 (the segment starts at 7:56).

As she did in “Q&A on Second COVID-19 Boosters for Older People,” McDonald described the data underpinning the authorization, which is limited, but includes some Israeli studies that have found that another shot in people 60 years and older does seem to further reduce the risk of severe COVID-19 compared with those who received three doses.

In the iHeartRadio interview, McDonald also addressed why the city of Philadelphia had been signaling that it could bring back its indoor mask mandate. She explained that COVID-19 cases had been on the rise, and the city was very close to hitting the metrics the health department previously set up to determine when it would reinstitute required masking in public indoor spaces.

On April 11, the day after the interview aired, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health announced it was reintroducing its indoor mask requirement, with enforcement set to begin the following week.

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FactCheck.org staffer Catalina Jaramillo was featured on the latest episode of “A Better Life?,” a podcast that explores how COVID-19 has made immigrants’ lives harder.

Jaramillo, a bilingual journalist and native of Chile, joined FactCheck.org in January as a writer, copy editor and translator for SciCheck, a project of FactCheck.org. Around that time, FactCheck.org started publishing SciCheck’s COVID-19 articles and videos in Spanish.

In this episode, called “Getting It Right,” Jaramillo speaks with Mia Warren, the host, and Nicolás Ríos, of the New York City immigration news site Documented, about confronting COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation directed at Latinos and Spanish-speaking immigrants.

During the interview, Jaramillo said immigrants can be the perfect prey for misinformation because they are more exposed to it than white audiences, and they often don’t have access to reliable information or a community that could counter it. According to a recent Nielsen report, Latinos spend more time on social media apps such as Instagram and Snapchat, or messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram, where messages are encrypted and misinformation flows more freely.

Jaramillo also mentioned research that shows social media networks are not doing enough to address misinformation in Spanish. According to the nonprofit organization Avaaz, last year, Facebook failed to flag 70% of misinformation in Spanish, compared with 29% in English. In March, Latino advocacy organizations launched “Ya Basta, Facebook” (“It’s enough, Facebook”), demanding more resources from the company. At that time Facebook told the media it was “taking aggressive steps to fight misinformation in Spanish and dozens of other languages, including by removing millions of pieces of COVID-19 and vaccine content.” (FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media.)

In the podcast, Jaramillo talks about how emotions play a big role in the way misinformation spreads, as Puerto Rican scientist Mónica Feliú-Mójer explained on this episode of “El hilo” podcast. Jaramillo also discussed FactCheck.org’s efforts to increase exposure to accurate information in English and Spanish through SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project, which is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and SciCheck’s efforts to reach Spanish-speaking audiences by partnering with Latino media and organizations — including Univision Noticias.

“A Better Life?” is produced by Feet in 2 Worlds, an organization that promotes the work of immigrant journalists.

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FactCheck.org Managing Editor Lori Robertson discussed several of our recent SciCheck articles on the public radio show “Conversations on Health Care.”

See the audio clips below and links to our full articles for more information.

Vaccinations Among Federal Employees

Federal health officials testified at a Senate committee hearing that about 60% of their employees have been vaccinated against COVID-19 so far. But viral online posts misleadingly claimed that half of the employees “are refusing” the vaccines. The officials did not say anyone had refused to get vaccinated.

For more, see “Posts Distort Testimony of Federal Health Officials on Employee Vaccinations.”

Vaccines and the Variants

So far, COVID-19 vaccines have been effective against variants of the coronavirus. Scientists are monitoring the situation carefully, with updated or new vaccines a possibility in the future, if need be.

For more, see “So Far, Vaccines Remain Effective Against Variants.”

Not a ‘Stanford Study’

Stanford Medicine says it “strongly supports the use of face masks to control the spread of COVID-19.” Yet viral stories circulating in April falsely claimed a “Stanford study” showed that face masks are unsafe and ineffective against COVID-19. The paper, which has since been retracted, is a hypothesis, not a study, from someone with no current affiliation with Stanford.

For more, see “Stories Falsely Cite ‘Stanford Study’ to Misinform on Face Masks.”

Editor’s note: SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project is made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over our editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation. The goal of the project is to increase exposure to accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines, while decreasing the impact of misinformation.

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FactCheck.org Deputy Managing Editor Robert Farley spoke with WBAL-TV in Baltimore and several other Hearst TV stations around the country about fact-checking the Democratic convention.

In interviews that aired on Aug. 21, Farley discussed several Democratic claims vetted by FactCheck.org over the course of the week:

• Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s statement, “Five million Americans infected by COVID-19. More than 170,000 Americans have died. By far the worst performance of any nation on Earth.” While the U.S. statistics are undeniably grim, when relative population is accounted for, the U.S. is not highest in the number of cases per 100,000 population, nor in its per capita death rate.
• Biden’s claim that President Donald Trump is “proposing to eliminate a tax that pays for almost half the Social Security without any way of making up for that lost revenue.” As Farley noted, it’s tricky because Trump did say he wanted to permanently end that tax, but administration officials say the president only meant he would forgive a recently announced payroll tax deferral through the end of the year.
• Former President Bill Clinton’s misleading claim that the U.S. is “the only major industrial economy to have its unemployment rate triple” because of Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the comparison is meaningless because the U.S. counts a temporarily laid off worker as unemployed, but many other countries do not.
• And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got it wrong when she said that “billionaires got $400 billion richer” during the pandemic. The figure comes from a study that said the net worth of America’s billionaires grew by that much in the two months after March 18. But the economic impact of the pandemic was felt earlier. The stock market lost about 30% of its value in the prior month.

You can view the full interview here. Our conventions stories and a video can be found here.

As part of a partnership with Hearst Television for the 2020 election, FactCheck.org’s work and interviews with our staff will air on Hearst TV and radio stations — which include 34 TV and two radio stations reaching 39 states — as well as appear on the stations’ websites.

Editor’s Note: Please consider a donation to FactCheck.org. We do not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.

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FactCheck.org Managing Editor Lori Robertson spoke with WHYY radio in Philadelphia about fact-checking the White House’s daily coronavirus task force briefings.

She was a guest on WHYY’s “Radio Times” on April 15 for a discussion on fact-checking and the challenge  for the media in covering these briefings live, along with Mark Lukasiewicz, a former senior executive at NBC News and ABC News.

Robertson discussed several recent FactCheck.org articles debunking claims President Donald Trump had made in these briefings. For instance, constitutional experts say Trump was wrong that he, not governors, had the power to “open up the states” where businesses were closed or residents were ordered to stay at home as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The president also made false statements about the drug hydroxychloroquine. Trump claimed “studies” had suggested there are few novel coronavirus cases in “malaria countries” because of the use of hydroxychloroquine as an antimalarial drug. But FactCheck.org found no such studies exist, and the drug is not widely used for malaria in much of the world. Similarly, he falsely claimed “people with lupus,” who also take hydroxychloroquine to treat symptoms of their disease, “aren’t catching this horrible virus.” In fact, people with lupus have reported contracting COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Robertson also discussed why FactCheck.org doesn’t use the word “lie” to label political falsehoods. A “lie” describes an intention to deceive, and we can’t prove someone’s intent. We don’t know whether a politician was mistaken or believed he or she was correct, for instance.

The full interview is available on WHYY’s website and Apple podcast.

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FactCheck.org writers Jessica McDonald and Angelo Fichera were interviewed by a South Korean radio program about their work combating misinformation related to the new coronavirus.

Since China reported a mysterious cluster of pneumonia cases to the World Health Organization on Dec. 31, false and misleading information has sprung up online and on social media about the virus responsible for the disease. 

Some people have falsely suggested that the Chinese scientists were removed from a Canadian lab for shipping pathogens to Wuhan, the city at the center of the outbreak. Others have inaccurately claimed that Lysol and Clorox were aware of the virus before it emerged.

In a segment airing on “This Morning,” a live English-language radio program in South Korea, science writer Jessica McDonald explained that much of the misinformation results from confusion over the term “coronavirus,” which is not specific to the new virus, and can refer to a variety of viruses in the coronavirus family. The new virus temporarily goes by the name 2019 novel coronavirus, or 2019-nCoV. 

In the same interview, staff writer Angelo Fichera discussed the partnership FactCheck.org has with Facebook, and told how an emergency preparedness event conducted last autumn was distorted online to falsely suggest that the new coronavirus had been predicted. He wrote about that in his Jan. 29 article, “New Coronavirus Wasn’t ‘Predicted’ In Simulation.”

Listen to the full South Korean radio interview here. For more on our coronavirus coverage, see all of our articles here, including “Q&A on the Wuhan Coronavirus.”

The post Explaining Coronavirus Misinformation appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Hearst TV’s WCVB 5, in Boston, aired a segment on our annotation of President Donald Trump’s Dec. 17 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the impeachment vote. The collaboration is part of FactCheck.org’s 2020 election partnership with Hearst Television Inc. 

In the video, Hearst highlights Trump’s statement: “This impeachment represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power by Democrat Lawmakers.” Hearst points out, as we did in our annotation, that the Constitution gives the House of Representatives “the sole Power of Impeachment.”

Trump also said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “has repeatedly declared that I did nothing wrong, and that there was No Pressure.” Zelensky has said that he did not feel pressured by Trump, but he took issue with Trump’s hold on military aid to his country. “We’re at war. If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us. I think that’s just about fairness,” Zelensky said.

The Hearst video segment also looked at Trump’s claim that Rep. Adam Schiff went “so far as to fraudulently make up, out of thin air, my conversation with” Zelensky. Schiff did give his own version of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky, admitting in a congressional hearing that his retelling of the call “was meant to be at least part in parody.”

Trump repeated one of his worst falsehoods of the year in claiming that the whistleblower’s report of the July 25 phone call “bears no relationship to the actual phone call that was made.” In fact, the White House memo on the call, which Trump released, corroborates the whistleblower’s three main points about the call. And Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified that the whistleblower’s complaint “is in alignment with” the White House memo.

Watch the full video here. For more on Trump’s letter, see our annotation.

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FactCheck.org’s work during the 2020 election cycle will be featured on Hearst Television Inc. outlets as part of a recent agreement.

Our work and interviews with our staff will air on Hearst TV and radio stations — which include 34 TV and two radio stations reaching 39 states — as well as appear on stations’ websites.

Under the partnership, Hearst’s WJCL 22, an ABC affiliate in Savannah, aired two fact-checking segments in late October, featuring FactCheck.org Managing Editor Lori Robertson. In those segments, Robertson talked about our stories on claims made by President Donald Trump and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff regarding the impeachment inquiry, and our work on assertions about Syria by both Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate. 

An ABC affiliate in Oklahoma City, KOCO News 5, was one of numerous Hearst properties that featured our Oct. 31 story, “What We’ve Learned from Impeachment Inquiry,” on its website.

In November, KCRA 3, an NBC affiliate in Sacramento, produced a segment on our story “Trump Again Misunderstands California’s Wildfires,” in which we wrote about the president’s false claim that other states don’t have “close to the level of burn” as California and his inaccurate assertion that poor forest management was to blame for the recent wildfires in the state.

Also, WCVB 5, an ABC affiliate in Boston, posted our story about impeachment polls — “Trump Twists Impeachment Polls” — and a video segment about it. The president said that “if you look at the poll numbers in the swing states, they’re saying, ‘Don’t do this.'” But that depends on what “this” is. In swing state polls, a majority opposes removing Trump from office via impeachment, but a majority supports moving forward with the impeachment inquiry. A number of national polls show more Americans want Trump impeached and removed from office than those who don’t.

For more on these issues, follow the links above to our articles.

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FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely appeared Oct. 11 on “Politics with Amy Walter,” a podcast produced by Public Radio International and WNYC.

Walter, a veteran political journalist, and Kiely discuss fact-checking campaign ads in the 2020 campaign cycle, and what viewers can do to combat the flood of misinformation on the airwaves and online.

Kiely also breaks down a misleading campaign ad by President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign that creates a false narrative about Joe Biden’s motive for pressuring Ukraine when he was vice president to fire the country’s then prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin. FactCheck.org wrote about that ad in an Oct. 9 article, “Fact: Trump TV Ad Misleads on Biden and Ukraine.“

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