Nearly Half of Americans Believe October’s Top False Claims
The False Claim that Special Counsel Jack Smith Tapped Senators’ Phones Draws Most Believers
Nearly half of Americans believed one of the top three false claims spreading online identified by NewsGuard. The claims involved a Justice Department investigation, the mass shooting at a Mormon church, and the “No Kings” protests.
NewsGuard’s Reality Gap Index is the nation’s first ongoing measurement of Americans’ propensity to believe at least one of the top three false claims circulating online each month, sourced from NewsGuard’s False Claims Fingerprints data stream. Through a monthly survey of a representative sample of Americans conducted by YouGov, the Reality Gap Index measures the percentage of Americans who believe one or more of the month’s top three false claims.
The October 2025 Reality Gap Index Is: 46%.
October Results
After a one month drop in September to 31%, the Reality Gap Index rose in October, with nearly half of Americans (46%) saying they believed at least one of the three false claims this month to be true.
The most-believed false claim this month was that an FBI document released in October shows that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed to investigate Donald Trump’s possible role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, wiretapped eight Republican senators. The claim was spread by prominent Republicans, including Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. Twenty six percent of respondents believed the claim to be true, 20% correctly identified it as false, and 54% responded that they were unsure. In fact, the special counsel obtained a court order to obtain call logs, not the content of the calls.
For the false claim that an image showing the suspected Michigan Mormon church mass shooter wearing a “Trump 2020” T-shirt was photoshopped, a large majority of respondents (81%) said they were either unsure of (57%) or believed (24%) the claim that the photo was altered. Just 19% could correctly identify the claim as false. The authentic image with the Trump 2020 logo spread widely on social media platforms alongside an altered version of the photo, with the Trump 2020 logo edited out.
These results continue to underscore the difficulty Americans have in assessing whether altered images are real or whether real images are manipulated. In August’s Reality Gap, 73% either believed or were uncertain about the authenticity of AI-generated photos and videos circulating online that appeared to show Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein with underage girls. In September, even with a label clearly stating that the image was enhanced, 49% of respondents either believed (10.3%) the claim that an image showing Donald Trump with a deformity on his forehead was authentic or were not sure of its authenticity (38.7%).
The false claim that MSNBC misleadingly showed footage of a large 2017 protest that it portrayed as showing the recent “No Kings” protests, was the only claim of the three that more respondents correctly identified as false (30%) than believed was true (25%), with 46% responding they were unsure.
Read the full breakdown of the false claims surveyed and their debunks here.
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