Major Brands Unknowingly Fund Debunked Haitian Migrant Claim
Major Brands Unknowingly Fund Debunked Haitian Migrant Claim
PLUS: Iran Deep Fakes U.S. Public Figures; AI-Justin Bieber Sings About Diddy
Welcome to Reality Check, your inside look at how misinformation online is undermining trust — and who’s behind it.
Today:
Major brands unknowingly fund spread of bogus “migrants are eating our pets” claim
Putting words in their mouths: Iran deploys AI to turn public figures into fake pundits
AI-generated “Justin Bieber” song about Diddy goes viral
And more…
Today’s newsletter was edited by Jack Brewster, Eric Effron, and Sofia Rubinson.
1. Major Brands Unwittingly Advertise Alongside Debunked Haitian Pet-Eating Claim
By Coalter Palmer, Jack Brewster, and Sofia Rubinson
Major companies including Amazon, AT&T, and Grubhub are helping fund the spread of one of the most pervasive false claims of the 2024 election: that Haitian migrants are stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
What happened: NewsGuard identified ads for 36 major brands appearing on articles advancing the debunked false narratives about Haitian migrants.
The story just won’t go away, and now advertisers are helping to fund it. After former President Donald Trump advanced the claim during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 10, 2024, he and his running mate, J.D. Vance, have continued to push the debunked narrative. (For details on how NewsGuard analysts found and interviewed the people who originated the claim, see here.)
Context: With the false Haitian migrants claim continuing to spread online, NewsGuard identified nine articles across eight websites that advanced the claim and then analyzed the programmatic ads appearing alongside them. Programmatic advertising uses algorithms to automatically place ads on websites, typically without the knowledge of the advertiser. (Disclosure: NewsGuard licenses inclusion and exclusion lists of websites to enable brands to select where their ads appear.)
All nine articles were published by sites that get low ratings from NewsGuard. Each site fails at least one of NewsGuard’s major credibility standards, either by repeatedly publishing false or egregiously misleading content, failing to gather and present information responsibly, or both. (Read more about how NewsGuard rates sites on these criteria here.)
A closer look: Some examples include …
Ads for BJ’s Wholesale, Paris Baguette, and reMarkable appeared next to an article titled “Vetted Video Shows Ohio Immigrants Grilling Neighborhood Cats” published by conservative news site PJMedia.com (NewsGuard Trust Score: 27.5/100).
Ads for Ticketmaster, Boost Mobile, and Temu appeared next to an article titled “‘Can’t Take It Anymore’: Residents of Springfield Ohio Beg For Help After 20,000 Haitians Overwhelm City, Eat Local Wildlife” on pro-Russian blog ZeroHedge.com (Trust Score: 15/100). The article stated that Haitian migrants are “eating pets and wildlife according to locals” and that residents “have provided receipts showing that cats are indeed part of Haitian cuisine.”
Ads for Adobe, AT&T, and Kia appeared next to an article titled “It’s Not Just Springfield: Cats Go Missing in Bangor, Maine,” published by New Hampshire-based news site GraniteGrok.com (Trust Score: 37.5/100). The article stated: “I’m not sure if Bangor, Maine, has a Haitian population or an unusual number of homeless who heard the news in Springfield and decided to give it a try, but twenty domesticated house cats have gone missing, sixteen in just the last two months.” (According to Bangor’s Animal Control Office, those numbers are accurate. However, there is no evidence that Haitian migrants have anything to do with it.)
In response to NewsGuard’s emailed request for comment, Steve MacDonald, owner of GraniteGrok.com, said about the article: “First, this is in part parody spun on a current cultural affectation and second, we never say anyone is eating anything, including cats.”
More context: It’s not just websites. On Sept. 19, 2024, The New York Times (Trust Score: 87.5/100) reported that ads for major brands and political campaigns are appearing on viral YouTube videos advancing the Haitian migrant false claim.
In response to NewsGuard’s inquiry, a representative from Grubhub said: “We're continually working to strengthen our existing safeguards with our programmatic advertising partners to prevent Grubhub ads from appearing alongside content that promotes misinformation. We've taken steps to stop our ads from appearing on that website in the future.” A representative from Temu told NewsGuard: “We have taken immediate steps to prevent our ads from appearing on this website by adding it to our exclusion list. We are committed to ensuring that our ads are not associated with disinformation or hateful content and will continue to take prompt action to address any such issues.” Representatives for the other brands mentioned and websites ZeroHedge.com and PJMedia.com did not immediately respond to NewsGuard’s emailed requests for comment.
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2. Fake Sites, Fake Authors: Iranian Network Pushes AI-Generated U.S Commentaries Designed to Polarize
By Dimitris Dimitriadis and McKenzie Sadeghi
What happened: An Iranian-linked network of websites is presenting the sites as local U.S. news outlets and using AI to churn out divisive commentaries about the U.S. election. These articles are falsely attributed to public figures including WNBA star Brittney Griner and former U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, NewsGuard found.
A closer look: The pro-Iran network of seemingly legitimate news websites was first uncovered by Microsoft in an Aug. 9, 2024, report. The report said that the network is “actively engaging U.S. voter groups on opposing ends of the political spectrum with polarizing messaging.”
A week later, on Aug. 16, 2024, OpenAI revealed that it had disrupted the operation by banning accounts that were using ChatGPT to create commentary on both U.S. presidential candidates.
However, NewsGuard this week found that the network is still apparently using ChatGPT to generate commentaries and falsely attributing them to public figures.
For example, NewsGuard identified six fabricated op-eds published in September 2024 by a site in the pro-Iran network called Savannah Time (Trust Score: 7.5/100). The fake commentaries included an article headlined “Trump’s 1-Point Lead Over Harris in New Poll Proves the American People Want Proven Leadership.” It was falsely attributed to Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung.
Another commentary titled “The Supreme Court’s Legitimacy Hinges on Reform” was falsely credited to Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman and a Trump critic. One titled “Harris Polling Surge: An Illusion?” was attributed to Scott Keeter, a senior survey adviser at the U.S.-based nonprofit Pew Research Center. A commentary headlined “From Prisoner to Patriot: My Journey Back to the Stars and Stripes” carried basketball star Brittney Griner’s byline.
NewsGuard did not find any evidence of such op-eds appearing in reliable media outlets.
AI text detection tool Pangram Labs found a 99.99 percent likelihood that the commentaries were created using OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 model.
In a September 2024 email to NewsGuard, Pew’s Keeter said, “I did not author this piece.” A spokesperson for Griner told NewsGuard that she did not write the op-ed. Kinzinger and Cheung did not respond to emails seeking comment.
In a September 2024 emailed statement to NewsGuard, an OpenAI spokesperson said, “We have banned additional accounts associated with the Iranian influence operation we identified and disrupted in August. We believe these were recidivist accounts, and their content was similar to what we’ve seen previously from this network. We will continue to monitor and disrupt activity related to this network ahead of the election.”
Tricks of our trade: The predictable structure and overuse of certain transitional phrases within articles suggest they were likely generated by AI. The formulaic layout and simplified arguments lack the natural nuance and variability that typically come from human writing.
Click here to find out more about NewsGuard Trust Scores and our process for rating websites. You can download NewsGuard’s browser extension, which displays NewsGuard Trust Score icons next to links on search engines, social media feeds, and other platforms by clicking here.
3. One more thing … No, Justin Bieber Did Not Release a Song “Lost Myself at a Diddy Party”
By Sarah Komar and Sofia Rubinson
What happened: Social media users are sharing an audio clip of a purported Justin Bieber song that describes the emotional toll of attending a party hosted by rapper and music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs. Audio experts say it’s probably AI-generated.
You can listen to the song here:
Social media users are citing the song as evidence that Combs abused Bieber and that Bieber is fighting to expose the alleged criminal behavior. For example, TikTok user @TexasCop2.0 received 3.6 million views and 190,000 likes in five days on a video with the song captioned, “Police listing [sic] to Justin Bieber new song about diddy.”
Context: Combs was arrested on Sept. 16, 2024, and faces federal charges of sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution. The clip of the supposed Bieber song was uploaded to TikTok at least by November 2023 but got its first major spread in April 2024, after Combs’ residences were raided by federal authorities. It picked up new steam with the arrest of Combs this month.
A closer look: The audio includes a voice that sounds like Bieber’s singing: “🎶Lost myself at a Diddy party / Didn’t know that’s how it goes / I was in it for a new Ferrari / But it cost me way more than my soul / Was it worth all the fortune and fame / All the girls never walking the same / Signed the papers so he never has to ever say sorry / Lost myself at a Diddy party.🎶”
The audio was also posted on YouTube in music lyric videos that received millions of views.
Actually: There is no evidence that Bieber recorded this song. No song with such lyrics appears in Bieber’s discography, and neither Bieber nor his record label has publicly acknowledged its existence.
In fact, experts say it is likely the song was created by artificial intelligence.
“My professional analysis suggests the song does not feature Justin Bieber's actual vocals,” Manjeet Rege, director of the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence at the University of St. Thomas, told NewsGuard in a September 2024 email. “While the voice has some similarities to Bieber’s style, subtle nuances in phrasing and emotional expression seem lacking.”
Rege said the vocal delivery sounds mechanical and flat and that its “overall production feels overly polished but lifeless, which is a hallmark of AI-generated music.”
Stephen Stahl, co-founder of Ai-SPY, an AI audio detection tool, told CBS News (Trust Score: 90/100) in a September 2024 fact-checking article that it is likely a person wrote the lyrics and melody, and then entered them into a tool that can clone an artist’s voice to create a song.
Tricks of their trade: Several free online tools allow users to upload any audio file and transform it in minutes into a fully-produced song featuring the cloned vocals of one of hundreds of artists.
A representative for Justin Bieber did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
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If you see or hear something that you think may be provably false, please alert NewsGuard via realitycheck@newsguardtech.com and we'll do our best to get to the bottom of it. Note: Tips should not include content that you simply disagree with, however strongly.
Fake Local News Sites Tracker: 1,280 Sites and Counting
In June 2024, NewsGuard reported that so-called pink slime websites — sites posing as independent news outlets but secretly funded by partisan groups — now outnumber daily newspapers in the U.S. Below, we track the spread of pink slime websites, as compared to Northwestern Local News Initiative’s count of daily newspapers. (Northwestern’s tracker was last updated in December 2023.)
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