Over the years, social media users have shared a statement about entrusting Americans with “unpleasant facts” purportedly spoken by former President John F. Kennedy.

The posts alleged that former President John F. Kennedy had said:

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

In fact, we discovered various social media posts containing the quote over the years, like a 2019 Reddit post, a 2022 Twitter post, a 2023 Facebook post, and a 2023 TikTok post.

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” –JFK

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) November 29, 2022

Did John F. Kennedy Say Americans Could Be Entrusted with ‘Unpleasant Facts’

The quote is correctly attributed to JFK. The quote has been posted on the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website. And the quote has also been post on The American Presidency Project website, which analyzes the American presidency and holds many presidential documents.

The statement was uttered during a Feb. 26, 1962, speech Kennedy gave about the 20th anniversary of Voice of America (VOA), the state-owned U.S. news network. The presidential library’s website described the speech as being about “the necessity of freedom of information and complete truthfulness of the media.”

The full paragraph the quote came from discussed the values of the VOA network. It said:

In 1946 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution reading in part, “freedom of information is a fundamental human right, and the touchstone of all the freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated.” This is our touchstone as well. This is the code of the Voice of America. We welcome the views of others. We seek a free flow of information across national boundaries and oceans, across iron curtains and stone walls. We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

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Does This Photo Show the Biggest Horse in History?

In April 2023, a viral photo showed the biggest horse in history. The first post we found on social media platforms sharing the photo of the gigantic horse was a TikTok video posted on April 18, 2023. Originally in German, the video’s caption stated, “#biggest #horse #in the world #The biggest horse in the world was the Shire Horse gelding “Sampson”, who had a height of 2.19 cm and weighed 1524 kg.”

We also found claims about the picture on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. On Twitter, fact-checker Hoaxeye called it “the biggest fake I’ve seen today.”

There is no evidence that the horse in the picture was the biggest horse in the world, or that the biggest horse was ever photographed at all. The photo had clear signs of being fake. For example, AI technology often can’t handle creating hands. When we zoomed in on the photo, the hands in the photograph appeared to be blobs. In particular, the hands on the left side of the photo appeared to be merged together.

According to Guinness World Records, the tallest documented horse in the world was indeed named Sampson (later renamed Mammoth). The shire gelding was foaled in 1946 and bred by Thomas Cleaver of Bedfordshire, a county located in the U.K.

Some facts about the horse that were also listed on the website didn’t match the TikTok caption. While Sampson was indeed 1,524 kg (3,359 lb), he was 2.19 meters tall, not centimeters like the caption stated. (In feet, that is 7-feet-2.5 inches.) The webpage did not include a picture of what Sampson looked like.

Although there have been other large horses that have come close, Sampson still holds the record for being the tallest horse. Garden & Gun Magazine wrote in January 2022 that a horse named Big John that lived in Virginia had become the unofficial “King of Horsetok” as the largest living horse in the world, with the horse being 6-feet-8 inches.

Claim- In April 2023, a viral photo showed the biggest horse in history.

Are claims about the “biggest horse in the world” that spread across social media platforms in April 2023 true? The answer appears to be neigh.

While a photo has previously spread online of a white horse that supposedly shows Sampson, it was miscaptioned. The photo actually showed another horse, Brooklyn Supreme. We found the photo in Grinnell College’s archives, which said the horse was owned by C.G. Good & Son. from Ogden, Iowa. The photo was dated 1950 in the college’s archives. The caption stated Brooklyn Supreme weighed 3,200 pounds in 1950, and that it took 30 inches of iron to make one of his shoes.

In conclusion, because the image had clear signs of being fake, and because there is no evidence that any photo was ever taken of Sampson, the actual biggest known horse in history, we rate this claim “False.”

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An April 14, 2023, a tweet with a video of a dolphin transporting a small dog to a sailboat, described as “dolphin saves a dog that fell into the sea from the boat,” received nearly 800,000 views at the time of this reporting:

If the soundtrack and camerawork did not make it obvious, this is a scene from a movie “Zeus and Roxanne” — the 1997 film

“Zeus is a rowdy little ruffhouse of a dog, Roxanne, a delightful dolphin,” a description of the movie on Amazon reads. “What happens when the two come together, and the effect they have on the people who love them, is an exciting and unexpected tale of freedom, friendship, and love.”

Does this video show a dog being rescued by a dolphin?

Apparently, the viral Tweet scene is shown, in part, in a trailer for the movie:

The dog in the tweet was never in actual need of rescue, except, perhaps, from film critics. In a scathing 1997 review by New York Times critic Lawrence Van Gelder, the trio of dogs playing Zeus were called out for their overacting:

From the moment Zeus, actually played by three Portuguese Podengos, appears on screen, coyly cocking his head, raising his paws, sticking out his tongue and emitting pitiable whines, the interspecies signal of this film is that it is to be badly overacted.

Claim – A video authentically shows a dog being rescued by a dolphin.

Although eviscerated for overacting by a New York Times film critic, the dog in a viral tweet was never in any physical danger.

We rate the clip as “Miscaptioned”, because both Zeus and Roxanne are fictional characters from a poorly reviewed 1997 family film.

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