Anatomy of a Fact Check
Are Europeans being arrested for mean tweets?
I started noticing a lot of memes about Europeans being sent to prison for posting offensive memes. After a while I began wondering if it might actually be true.
I’m not a big fan of Fact Checks™. I think they’re bias in two ways. The first is what they choose to check and second is how they choose to define the spirit of the claim.
Much like the news, fact checks can choose to engage some topics while ignoring others. And when they do look at a claim, they can choose to focus on only a certain part of the claim.
For instance, a typical fact check would look at a statement like “Person X says prices for Y have doubled, when in fact they have only risen 97%”. I’m reminded of the viral clip of a news reporter fact checking JD Vance by stating “only a handful” of apartment complexes have been taken over by Venezuelan gangs.
So I didn’t have high hopes for the fact check but I can usually read between the lines and get something out of them.
So I found a fact check from Reuters, what I consider a more or less down the middle news source. The claim being evaluated was: “BREAKING: British police have just arrested an 11 year old over his ‘mean tweets’ posted on social media.”
The fact check starts well enough:
Cleveland Police on Aug. 28 targeted 20 addresses and arrested 14 people, one of whom was an 11-year-old, according to a police statement, released the next day.
However, the 11-year-old was arrested on suspicion of violent disorder in Middlesbrough, not for posting on social media, the police said in the statement, and told Reuters.
It’s not happening
I guess it was blown out of proportion. It’s really “suspicion of violent disorder”. I’m looking forward to the fact check telling me what that entails.
“We haven’t arrested an 11-year-old for sending mean tweets,” a Cleveland Police spokesperson said via email.
The spokesperson said the 11-year-old, one of five juveniles arrested on suspicion of violent disorder by the force on Aug. 28 in relation to the riots, was later bailed.
It’s a conspiracy theory
Okay, they have clarified it again. No mean tweets. And it appears other juveniles have been arrested for this yet to be explain crime. I’m sure an explanation of the offense is coming.
Cleveland Police arrested another 11-year-old on suspicion of arson after a police vehicle was set alight in Hartlepool on July 31, according to the spokesperson and an Aug. 1 statement, . The child was also released on bail, the spokesperson said.
Non-sequitur
Oh, it looks like another 11 year old boy was arrested for arson in the same town. Is this somehow related? Is there a crime spree of 11 year old boys thats relevant? Let’s continue.
Sending grossly offensive, obscene, indecent, or menacing messages on public electronic communication networks is a criminal offence in Britain under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003
It might be happening
Wait, so can you be arrested for sending mean tweets?
Three men, including one, in Wales, were jailed in early August for riot-related social media posts, judged to have encouraged violent disorder in the wake of the Southport murders.
It’s happening but it’s actually a good thing
So what’s the verdict?
Misleading. An 11-year-old was arrested on suspicion of violent disorder, not for social media posts, during a swathe of arrests by British police targeting those involved in rioting.
Right, suspicion of violent disorder.
They could have saved a lot of effort by just referencing this still up tweet.
VERDICT: FALSE, the boy was 12, not 11.
And this comes around to the first way fact checks can be biased, by choosing on what they report. If you search “fact check arrested for mean tweets”, you’ll get this article. You likely don’t care about any one particular case, rather the basic question “Are Europeans sending people to prison for sending mean tweets.” But they choose to report on this one case where an 11 year old was arrested, for something that may or may not include sending a mean tweet.
I guess what they say is true, all rumors are false until officially denied.