CNN published an article headlined: “Harris and Walz pledges free Costco membership for all SNAP recipients”.
False. This headline has not been published by CNN, and there’s no evidence it’s true. It appears to be an altered screenshot of a genuine CNN article with a different headline.
An edited screenshot of a CNN article featuring US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz is circulating online.
The screenshot appears to show an article on the politics page of the CNN website with the headline: “Harris and Walz pledges [sic] free Costco membership for all SNAP recipients”, and features a photo of them on a stage at Temple University in Philadelphia earlier this month.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme (SNAP)—sometimes referred to as food stamps—provides food benefits to low-income families in the US. In 2023, 42.1 million people per month on average, or 12.6% of US residents, were on SNAP.
However, CNN has not published an article with this headline, and Full Fact could find no credible sources reporting on any such pledge involving free Costco membership for SNAP recipients. Similarly there’s no such announcement on Costco’s website.
The image being shared appears to actually be an edited screenshot of a real CNN article with the headline: “Harris and Walz target battleground Georgia in post-Democratic National Convention swing”, which features the same photo and caption, authors and publication details.
Ms Harris does not appear to have said anything about changes to SNAP if she were to be elected, but she has pledged to send Congress proposals for federal limits on price increases for food producers and grocers within her first 100 days in office.
Full Fact has contacted CNN for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.
This is not the first time we’ve seen examples of images shared online showing edited screenshots of articles, including some supposedly published by the Guardian, the BBC, the Telegraph and Haaretz.
We’ve been fact checking a number of claims relating to Ms Harris in the run up to the US presidential election in November, including edited images supposedly showing her with Jeffery Epstein and standing with Mr Walz in front of a communist poster.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because this headline has not been published by CNN and is an altered screenshot of another article.
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