A new report from media watchdog NewsGuard has found evidence of brand and other organizations' ads appearing next to multiple posts on Elon Musk's X that contain misleading or false information about the Israel-Hamas war.

In late October 2023, a number of viral online posts and articles claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin had died on Oct. 26, 2023, and a coup was underway in Moscow.

The rumors reportedly spread after a Telegram channel called General SVR claimed Putin had gone into cardiac arrest on Oct. 22, 2023. Other reports claimed Putin had been using a body double since.

The number of Americans who have lost all confidence in U.S. news media has reached a record high, according to a new poll out Thursday.

A poll from Gallup examining American trust in mass media found 39 percent have “none at all,” marking an all-time high since 1972 when the pollster first asked the question. Another 29 percent said they have “not very much trust” in media, which matches 2016 levels. Only about 3 in 10 respondents reported any real confidence, with 32 percent saying they still have “a great deal” or even just a “fair amount” of trust…

Take a step back and the morality of the matter should be simple. A jihadi group carries out what may be the worst terrorist atrocity in history against the civilians of a liberal democracy. Facing an existential threat, that country – which for almost two decades has been providing the enclave with electricity and water while its leaders spend their funds on terror infrastructure – launches defensive military action.

Civilians die in the crossfire; such is the hell of war. There are only so many beheadings a nation can take.

After first the Israeli government and then the United States government issued statements Wednesday, with supporting evidence, that the deadly rocket exploding into the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital parking lot in Gaza on Tuesday did not emanate from Israel, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi gave an expected if telling response.

"Nobody is buying that narrative in this part of the world," Safadi told NBC. Safadi's predecessor (and also Jordan's former ambassador to Israel), Marwan Muasher, echoed that in an interview with CNN: "The Arab public puts the attack squarely on Israel."

Hearst Television, which has been one of our media partners since 2019, recently featured our work in a “Get the Facts” segment on how to detect social media misinformation.

The segment includes two of our recent articles about the Israel-Hamas war — one about a viral video clip that took former President Donald Trump’s remarks about Israel out of context and another about social media posts that shared a doctored “memorandum” from the White House on aid to Israel.

Beware of the Jihadi propaganda machine, liberal media. These terrorists know you’re anti-Israel. They know more likely than not that there are enough clowns who take the ‘two equal sides’ approach to this issue when there is none. A terrorist organization intentionally targeted civilians, raping, killing, and kidnapping them—subjecting children to torture and wholesale slaughter. Israel has warned Gaza civilians to vacate areas that could become warzones and do not intentionally target civilians despite what scores of anti-Israel leftists have declared in previous years.

After Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, killing at least 1,000 and taking at least 150 hostages, and Israel declared war against Hamas and retaliated, photographs and videos of violence flooded out of the region and onto social media. Some of the images were posted by victims on the ground at the attacks. Some were reportedly seeded by Hamas, but others were years old, taken from conflict zones in other parts of the world, or even from a fictional video game.

After President Biden won the election nearly three years ago, three of every 10 Americans believed the false narrative that his victory resulted from fraud, a poll found. In the years since, fact checkers have debunked the claim in lengthy articles, corrections posted on viral content, videos and chat rooms.

This summer, they received a verdict on their efforts in an updated poll from Monmouth University: Very little has changed. Three of every 10 Americans still believed the false narrative.