chengxuphd/liar2 huggingface dataset:
Statement: The mother of a missing boy in Nebraska confessed to killing him.
Speaker: viral image
About the speaker: Graphics, pictures and charts shared on social media give chain emails a run for their money when it comes to spreading too-good-to-be-true claims all over the Internet. A common form is is the "Internet macro," which uses an easily recognized and repurposed image (called a meme) wth superimposed text to make a funny but political argument. Sometimes these images are passed across social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit so widely that the original source is nearly impossible to determine.
Date: May 24, 2021
Topics: crime;facebook fact-checks
Context: a Facebook post
Fact-check justification: Lausten told local news reporters the next day that authorities continue to search for the boy and that they’re focused on an area near a lake where multiple K9 dogs alerted to something.   Lausten said that police haven’t ruled out foul play but he described Larsen’s family — including the boy’s mother — as "extremely upset. "  "The mother, the other sisters, were just destroyed," the police chief said. Police have said nothing that would substantiate any of the information in the text messages being shared online.   We rate this post .
Statement: Pfizer admits there's no vaccine approved by FDA.
Speaker: bloggers
About the speaker: Blog posting on the Internet
Date: October 10, 2021
Topics: facebook fact-checks;coronavirus
Context: a blog post
Fact-check justification: The recording in the blog post is described as a Pfizer customer service representative saying that the vaccine hasn’t been approved. If she said that after Aug. 23 about the 16-and-up group, she was . But in any case, that doesn’t amount to the company admitting that the vaccine didn’t receive FDA approval. It did, and Pfizer is on record proudly saying so.   We rate this post .
Statement: Says Obama flip-flopped on a gas-tax "holiday.
Speaker: republican national committee
About the speaker: The Republican National Committee is the national arm of the Republican Party.
Date: April 24, 2008
Location: national
Topics: energy
Context: a Web video
Fact-check justification: So that leaves us with  on both sides. The RNC is right that he voted for the 2000 bill and opposes the new McCain proposal. But the RNC leaves out the fact that he opposed the extension because of concern for consumers and now opposes the McCain bill for that reason. But it's not fair to call it a flip-flop when the very reason Obama opposes a suspension of the gas tax now is because he concluded that it didn't work when he supported one in the past. We rule this .
Statement: Under the Republican tax reform law, "83 percent of the benefits go to the top 1 percent of individuals and large multinational corporations.
Speaker: tammy baldwin
About the speaker: Tammy Baldwin was elected to the U.S. Senate on Nov. 6, 2012. She represented Wisconsin’s Second Congressional District from January 1999 to January 2013. She served as a member of the Wisconsin Assembly from January 1993 to January 1999. She was a Dane County supervisor from 1986 to 1994 and briefly served on the Madison Common Council, filling a vacancy, in 1986.
Date: October 22, 2018
Location: wisconsin
Topics: corporations;income;taxes
Context: a speech
Fact-check justification: Our rating Baldwin says that under the Republican tax reform law, "83 percent of the benefits go to the top 1 percent of individuals and large multinational corporations." Even though her statement mentions corporations, it isn’t materially different than three similar statements we’ve checked. In a nutshell, the analysis that all four statements rely on found that by 2027, the law would deliver 82.8 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of the income spectrum. However, in earlier years, the distribution of benefits would look very different, with much smaller percentages of the benefits  — 20 to 25 percent — going to the top 1 percent. Baldwin’s statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details  — our definition of .
Statement: Biden gave Americans "the cheapest gas prices on Earth.
Speaker: tweets
About the speaker: Twitter is a messaging service where people often discuss politics. Individual messages are called Tweets.
Date: June 2, 2022
Location: national
Topics: gas prices
Context: a tweet
Fact-check justification: A tweet claimed that Biden gave Americans the "cheapest" gas prices on Earth. This isn’t accurate. While gas prices in the U.S. are lower than in some European countries because of oil production and taxes, they certainly aren’t the lowest in the world.  Biden has little to do with fuel prices. Oil is part of a global market that is impacted by a slew of factors — like pandemics, inflation and war  — that are largely outside of the president’s control.  We rate this .  RELATED: Ask PolitiFact: Why are gas prices going up?   RELATED: How much blame does Putin deserve for high gasoline prices?
Statement: Says Barack Obama "said black males are two times more likely to be shot by a law enforcement officer than white males" and "that is a lie" because "there is no data.
Speaker: david a. clarke jr.
About the speaker: David A. Clarke Jr. served as Milwaukee County sheriff from 2002 to 2017.
Date: July 17, 2016
Location: wisconsin
Topics: criminal justice;crime;population;guns
Context: an interview
Fact-check justification: He said that Obama "said black males are two times more likely to be shot by a law enforcement officer than white males," but he was slightly off, in that the president spoke about all African-Americans and whites, not just males. Clarke also said the two times more likely statistic is "a lie" because "there is no data." He is correct that there is no national data on all police shootings -- fatal and non-fatal -- to back that statistic. But he goes too far in saying it is a lie, given that we don’t know if the statistic is accurate. For a statement that contains some element of , our rating is .
Statement: James Langevin "has received almost $20 million from taxpayers and special interests to use at his own discretion to supposedly champion Rhode Island's needs.
Speaker: michael riley
About the speaker: Michael G. Riley, a Narragansett businessman who calls himself a "small-government and free-market Republican," made an unsuccessful bid for Congress in the 2nd Congressional District in 2012. He is co-founder of the Coastal Management Group, a consulting and investment company. He has served on the Narragansett Pension Board and Charter Review Commission.
Date: September 18, 2012
Location: rhode island
Topics: campaign finance;congress;message machine 2012;negative campaigning
Context: a radio ad
Fact-check justification: Michael Riley’s campaign ad says Rep. James Langevin "has received almost $20 million from taxpayers and special interests to use at his own discretion to supposedly champion Rhode Island’s needs." When you add Langevin’s salary, his staff salaries and his campaign contributions, you do get nearly $20 million. But Riley’s  -- and the ad’s portrayal of Langevin as a shark looking to "feast" on taxpayers’ dollars -- suggests he has a slush fund and has used it improperly. That’s a gross distortion of very common practices allowed by law and the U.S. Constitution. We rule his statement .
Statement: The coronavirus pandemic is "effectively over" in the United Kingdom and "there is absolutely no need for vaccines.
Speaker: bloggers
About the speaker: Blog posting on the Internet
Date: October 16, 2020
Topics: public health;facebook fact-checks;coronavirus
Context: a blog post
Fact-check justification: In a blog post that has sparked several widespread social media posts, Yeadon claimed the pandemic is "effectively over" in the U.K. and "there is absolutely no need for vaccines." Both points are  and at odds with the realities of the pandemic, which has upended lives and killed over 1.4 million people globally. Confirmed daily case counts were rising in the U.K. at the time of Yeadon’s  and remain in the tens of thousands. People are still dying. Experts said that COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths will continue to mount in the absence of widespread mitigation measures until a vaccine is distributed. We rate Yeadon’s  !
Statement: Donald Trump "cancelled Bill Gates project known as ID2020.
Speaker: facebook posts
About the speaker: Posters on Facebook and other social media networks.
 
Date: June 3, 2020
Topics: technology;privacy issues;facebook fact-checks
Context: a Facebook post
Fact-check justification: ID2020 deid not comment on the . Our June 8 searches of Google and Nexis turned up no mention of Trump taking any action against ID2020 or even making mention of it. And we found no mention of ID2020 in June 8 searches of TrumpTwitterArchive.com and the Factba.se database of Trump tweets, speeches and other remarks. Our fact-checking colleagues at Africa Check and FactCheck.org also found that Trump had not canceled the program. We rate the statement .
Statement: During his tenure as mayor, he "saw Houston's crime rates drop to the lowest levels in more than 25 years.
Speaker: bill white
About the speaker: Bill White, an author, is a San Antonio native who was mayor of Houston from 2004-2009. He was the 2010 Democratic nominee for governor of Texas.
Date: December 28, 2009
Location: texas
Topics: crime
Context: the biography on his campaign Web site
Fact-check justification: And the decline was under way before White took office. Nevertheless, when the Houston FBI office gave White the FBI Director’s 2007 Community Leadership Award, his efforts to combat crime were among the reasons cited. "Mayor White is being recognized for his outstanding contributions toward improving the quality of life in the City of Houston through his commitment to law enforcement and the prevention of crime," a statement from the FBI said. Summing up: Although experts debate the reasons for the downward trend in crime nationwide, White is right that the total crime rate in Houston hit a 25-year low during his time as mayor. We give him a .
Statement: Says a Twitter account for "Scarsdale NY Antifa" tweeted that "chapters of Antifa around Oregon have collaborated to ignite fires around the state.
Speaker: facebook posts
About the speaker: Posters on Facebook and other social media networks.
 
Date: September 14, 2020
Location: oregon
Topics: fires;facebook fact-checks;new york
Context: a Facebook post
Fact-check justification: New York magazine identified it in 2017 as one of many likely  antifa accounts. A reporter noted on Sept. 12, two days after the tweet in question went up, that the account had been suspended. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed Sept. 14 that the account was suspended for violating Twitter’s policy on "platform manipulation and spam." The policy says violations occur when users operate  accounts, use multiple accounts to artificially amplify or disrupt conversations, artificially inflate their followers or engagement, or misuse Twitter’s features. We rate this Facebook post .
Statement: Video shows a faulty New York voting machine invalidated a GOP vote in governor's race.
Speaker: facebook posts
About the speaker: Posters on Facebook and other social media networks.
 
Date: November 5, 2022
Topics: elections;facebook fact-checks
Context: Facebook and Instagram posts
Fact-check justification: A video suggested that a New York voter’s inability to submit his ballot through a scanner suggested his vote wasn’t being counted because the voting machine was broken. The man blamed Democrats. But elections officials said that the machine shown was not a vote tabulator but a device designed to help voters with visual impairments or other disabilities mark their ballots. We rate claims this video shows a broken voting machine .
Statement: In 1998, nearly half of Florida's fourth-graders were functionally illiterate. Today, 72% of them can read.
Speaker: jeb bush
About the speaker: Jeb Bush was a Republican candidate for president of the United States in 2016. He served two terms as the governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. He is also the brother of former President George W. Bush and the son of former President George H.W. Bush. 
Date: January 3, 2011
Location: florida
Topics: education
Context: a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece
Fact-check justification: All this may seem like semantics, but the definitions here are important. Here's what Bush wrote: "In 1998, nearly half of Florida's fourth-graders were functionally illiterate. Today, 72% of them can read." The contrast here can be read to mean that nearly half of Florida's fourth-graders couldn't read in 1998, and now, 72 percent can read. But that's not . Close to half of fourth-grade students in Florida failed to meet a "Basic" level of reading as defined by the federal government in 1998. In 2009, that number fell to 27 percent -- meaning 73 percent of test takers were able to make the "Basic" reading level. Those are more complex definitions compared to being functionally illiterate and being able to read. That said, Bush's column also makes the broader point that reading scores in Florida have improved dramatically since 1998. And there's no question about that. Florida has gone from almost the worst to one of the best. In trying to boil down a complicated topic for a mainstream audience, Bush probably picked the  words. But his point is valid. We rate his statement .
Statement: People (are) paying more in taxes than they will for food, housing and clothing combined.
Speaker: marco rubio
About the speaker: Marco Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida, was a candidate for president of the United States in 2016 and then dropped out and won re-election to the Senate. He was first elected to the Senate in 2010 and took office Jan. 5, 2011. Rubio served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2000 to 2008 and is a former Speaker of the Florida House. He served on the West Miami City Commission from 1998 to 2000. He is from Miami and holds a law degree from the University of Miami.
Date: February 14, 2016
Location: florida
Topics: taxes
Context: a web video
Fact-check justification: Rubio said that "people (are) paying more in taxes than they will for food, housing and clothing combined." Rubio’s statement only measures up if we look at aggregate spending on those basics by all Americans. But whether individuals spend more on taxes than food, housing and clothing varies widely depending upon their income. Wealthier Americans do spend more on taxes than food, housing and clothing combined, while those with low incomes do not. We rate this statement .
Statement: Soros, Obama and the Dems Ordered the Shutdown to Stage a Coup
Speaker: reaganwasright
About the speaker: Reaganwasright is a satirical website.
Date: January 22, 2018
Location: national
Topics: fake news
Context: a website
Fact-check justification: Blair told us his websites are carefully curated social experiment designed to "feed the Hoverounders their daily need for hate and their undying urge to blame everything in the known universe on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama." They’re also a vehicle to make money. The point, of course, is to get someone on Facebook to click on the post thinking it is real. "I discovered that Facebook following plus blog plus ads equals income," Blair told us previously. We rate this headline .
Statement: Barack (Obama) has one of his biggest supporters in terms of funding, the Exelon Corporation, which has spent millions of dollars trying to make Yucca Mountain the waste depository.
Speaker: hillary clinton
About the speaker: Hillary Clinton was the 2016 Democratic nominee for president. She served as U.S. Secretary of State during the first four years of the Obama administration. She is formerly a U.S. senator from New York, first elected in 2000. She was a candidate for president in 2008. She previously served as first lady when her husband, Bill Clinton, served two terms as president. She was born in Chicago in 1947, graduated from Wellesley College and earned a law degree at Yale Law School. She and her husband have one daughter.
Date: January 15, 2008
Location: national
Topics: ethics
Context: Las Vegas
Fact-check justification: Obama has not accepted any money from Exelon lobbyists or Exelon's political action committee; rather, the contributions are from people who work at Exelon. Of all these points, it's the last we find most compelling. Obama is not taking money from Exelon as a corporate entity or PAC, rather he's accepting contributions from Exelon executives and employees. (Clinton, by contrast, accepts federal PAC money, though she hasn't accepted any from Exelon.) It's a small but real difference, so we rate her  on Obama's ties to Exelon to be .
Statement: Heitkamp has voted against Trump 68 percent of time.
Speaker: national republican senatorial committee
About the speaker: The National Republican Senatorial Committee helps elect Republicans to the U.S. Senate.
Date: January 31, 2018
Location: national
Topics: voting record
Context: a digital ad
Fact-check justification: A North Dakota NRSC ad said, "Heitkamp has voted against Trump 68 percent of the time." That’s if you’re only looking at policy votes. When Cabinet and Supreme Court nominations are added to the mix, which is how both the source of the NRSC’s  and traditional legislative trackers score presidential support, Hetikamp supports Trump about half the time. Experts described excluding nominations, like Neil Gorsuch’s, as , as they play a key role in furthering Trump’s legislative agenda. We rate this statement .
Statement: Says President Barack Obama "has taken less vacation days than any other president in a generation," while Congress "has taken more vacation days than any other Congress in history.
Speaker: occupy democrats
About the speaker: Occupy Democrats, founded in 2012, is an advocacy group created to counterbalance the Republican tea party, and to "give President Obama and other progressive Democrats a Congress that will work with them to grow the economy, create jobs, promote fairness and fight inequality, and get money out of politics!"
Date: August 20, 2016
Location: national
Topics: bush administration;congress;fake news;history;voting record
Context: a posting on Facebook
Fact-check justification: Occupy Democrats says Obama "has taken less vacation days than any other president in a generation," while Congress "has taken more vacation days than any other Congress in history." The post is  for Obama. It is   for Congress. We rate it !
Statement: Says that under President John F. Kennedy, "government took up" 27 percent of the economy, and today it "consumes 37 percent.
Speaker: mitt romney
About the speaker: Mitt Romney is a U.S. senator from Utah. He ran for president in 2012 as the Republican nominee, losing to incumbent President Barack Obama. Prior to that, Romney served one term as governor of Massachusetts, elected to the post in 2002. He was born in 1947 in Michigan, where his father was governor from 1963 to 1969. Romney graduated from Brigham Young University and received both a law degree and an MBA from Harvard University. Romney helped found the investment firm Bain Capital in 1984, which launched or rebuilt such companies as Staples and Dominos Pizza. Romney managed the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City from 1999-2002. He ran for president in 2008 but lost the Republican nomination. He and his wife, Ann, have five sons, Tagg, Craig, Matt, Ben and Josh.
Date: August 11, 2011
Location: national
Topics: economy;federal budget;history
Context: Ames, Iowa
Fact-check justification: The Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes statistics that break down the components of national GDP. If you take the category "government consumption expenditures and gross investment" for all levels of government -- a figure that doesn’t include transfer payments -- and divide it by GDP, government accounted for 22.0 percent of GDP in 1963 and 20.7 percent of GDP in 2010. So Romney’s numbers are nearly correct, but they don’t tell the whole story. Yes, government spending has risen as a share of GDP, but the actual control on spending exerted by government has not risen by anywhere near that amount, because the bulk of the growth has come in transfer payments that individual Americans ultimately control (and, in many cases, under programs which they had paid into to begin with). On balance, we rate Romney’s statement .
Statement: In the U.S. asylum system, "claims of 'fear to return' have skyrocketed, and the percentage of claims that are genuinely meritorious are down.
Speaker: jeff sessions
About the speaker: Jeff Sessions is President Donald Trump's Attorney General. He was previously a U.S. Senator from Alabama.
 
Date: October 12, 2017
Location: national
Topics: immigration;homeland security
Context: a speech
Fact-check justification: Sessions said, "Claims of fear to return have skyrocketed, and the percentage of claims that are genuinely meritorious are down." The number of claims by immigrants citing credible fear to return to their home countries has significantly increased from 2009 to 2016. While there has been fraud in the asylum system, it’s uncertain and difficult to determine whether the percentage of "genuinely meritorious" credible fear claims is down, experts said. Sessions’ statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. We rate it .
Statement: The Rev. Wright compared "the United States Marine Corps with Roman legionnaires who were responsible for the death of our Savior.
Speaker: john mccain
About the speaker: John McCain was a U.S. senator from Arizona, a post he held from 1987 to his death in 2018. He previously served two terms in the U.S. House. He was the Republican nominee for president in 2008. McCain was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and spent his career in the military, as his father did. He was a combat pilot in Vietnam who was shot down and spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war. He was born in 1936 in Panama. 
Date: April 27, 2008
Location: national
Topics: terrorism
Context: Coral Gables, Fla
Fact-check justification: Since we're parsing Wright's words, let's parse McCain's too. He said Wright "compared" the Marines to Roman soldiers who persecuted Christ. One could certainly argue whether it is fair or appropriate to draw any parallels between U.S. soldiers and those Roman soldiers, or to what degree Wright was suggesting that they similar. McCain's recounting of Wright's statement seems an attempt to maximize the issue for sensational effect, but it certainly seems to us, based on Wright's interchanging modern language with the biblical tale, that he at least wanted his parishioners to consider a comparison of the two. We give it a .
Statement: Says "Scott Walker's bad budget includes: No weekend for workers.
Speaker: wisconsin state afl-cio
About the speaker: The Wisconsin State AFL-CIO describes itself as the statewide coordinating council for 1,000 unions that represent 250,000 members in Wisconsin. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a voluntary federation of 56 national and international labor unions.
Date: July 8, 2015
Location: wisconsin
Topics: jobs;labor;unions
Context: a Facebook post
Fact-check justification: "If, however, employers tried to make that an overt requirement of employment, the workers could use that as a legal argument against the employer because that would clearly violate the voluntary nature of the action," Witte said. Our rating The state AFL-CIO said, "Scott Walker’s bad budget includes: No weekend for workers." But the provision does not apply to all workers, as the  suggests. What’s more, it is a voluntary thing -- workers could agree to the extra day to, for instance, earn extra overtime. We rate the  .