(Re)introductions

Hi there, readers. A programming note: This marks the start of FactCheck.Weekly. Nope, it's not a new name for our organization or a new URL—you can still find us at FactCheck.org (where we continue to publish regularly throughout the week 😎). But it is the name for this weekly newsletter. Moving forward, you'll receive this email in place of the previous update you were receiving. An updated update, if you will.

Our aim with this refreshed approach is to provide you with a skimmable, but fact-heavy, check-in that helps you navigate political spin and viral misinformation. We'll highlight our recent work—we plan to use this space at the top to briefly dive into one key issue—and also showcase our team's fact-finding process and other updates we think might interest you.

All that said, this is a work in progress! We'd love to hear from you in the weeks ahead about what's working and what's not. You can reach us at [email protected].

P.S. If you're wondering about that sleek glass building in the photo above, that's the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. We're a nonprofit, nonpartisan project within the center, so it's our home base (at least when we're not working remotely from our actual homes).

Reader: Get off my Facebook and stop censoring my posts!

FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: We aren't censoring anyone. It's Facebook's decision what to do with its platform, not ours. All we do is provide more information that Facebook users can choose to read, if they want. FB users also have the option to completely ignore the fact check articles and click on the FB post—since the post isn’t removed. How does providing more information amount to censorship? 

Wrapping Up

Here's what else we've got for you this week:

• "Facebook Post Misleads on Bipartisan Capitol Attack Report and Interview": On June 8, a bipartisan group of senators released a report on the security and intelligence failures related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The report did not “single out” former President Donald Trump “for inciting … the riots,” as a Facebook post from the advocacy group Occupy Democrats could lead social media users to believe.
   
• "Viral Posts, Pundits Distort Fauci Emails": Thousands of pages of redacted emails to and from Dr. Anthony Fauci are now publicly available, thanks to journalists’ Freedom of Information Act requests. Some of those messages have been distorted in viral posts, particularly about face masks, the origins of the coronavirus and the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine.
   
• "Understanding Pennsylvania’s Proposed Bill on Handling Fetal Remains": A bill put forward in Pennsylvania proposes to mandate that health care providers bury or cremate fetal remains, regardless of when or how the pregnancy ends. While it doesn't technically "fine" women who miscarry, as some online have suggested, experts say such requirements could increase costs that trickle down to women or their insurers.
   
• "Biden Exaggerates Opposition Votes from Moderates": President Biden went too far when he claimed he hasn’t gotten more done legislatively because Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin “vote more with my Republican friends.” By one measure, both have voted with Biden’s position 100% of the time since he has been in office.
   
• "Dominion’s Defamation Lawsuits Are Still Active": Dominion Voting Systems has sued Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell for making false accusations of election fraud that defamed the company after the 2020 election. Both of those lawsuits are ongoing, but a false claim circulating on social media says that "Dominion LOST their law suits."

• "Ingrediente SM-102 de la vacuna es seguro": La vacuna de Moderna contra el COVID-19 usa un ingrediente llamado SM-102 para entregar el ARNm que porta instrucciones sobre cómo crear anticuerpos contra el nuevo coronavirus. Un video muy popular difunde la falsedad de que el SM-102 es dañino, pero la etiqueta de advertencia que muestra es para el cloroformo, no para el SM-102.
   
• "Aseguradoras sí brindan cobertura a vacunados contra el COVID-19": Las compañías de seguros no rechazan reclamos cuando alguien muere tras vacunarse contra el COVID-19, según la asociación comercial de ese sector American Council of Life Insurers. Pero un mensaje que ha ganado gran difusión en las redes sociales afirma erróneamente que los beneficiarios de una persona fallecida tras recibir la vacuna no pueden recibir pagos por seguros de vida.
   
• "Información de vacunas contra el COVID-19 fue revisada por pares, contrario a lo que dice un meme": Las vacunas contra el COVID-19 han sido objeto de estudios revisados por pares que encontraron que son efectivas y seguras, pero un meme que ha estado circulando en las redes sociales afirma erróneamente que no se han realizado este tipo de estudios.