THE TRUTH ABOUT SNOPES: THE UNRELIABLE ‘FACTS’ OF A FACT-CHECKING SITE

[SirLinksALot]

SOURCE: BARBWIRE

URL: https://barbwire.com/2018/05/03/truth-about-snopes-unreliable-facts-fact-checking-site/

by Robert Knight


This past week, Snopes jumped the shark. In a post about California Assembly Bill 2943, a frightening piece of pure-grade totalitarianism, Snopes belittled a conservative opponent and misrepresented the legislation.

The anti-“conversion therapy” bill sponsored by San Jose Democratic Assemblyman Evan Low basically forbids provision of counseling, books, advice, referrals, etc. aimed at helping someone overcome same-sex desires or transgender identification. In other words, it criminalizes the sexual morality code of every major religion and especially Christianity — the real target.

It should chill every freedom-loving American that this spectacular violation of the First Amendment passed the California House by a vote of 50-18 on April 19 and is now before the state Senate.

Snopes focused on a response by Republican Assembly member Travis Allen to One America News Network’s Liz Wheeler, who asked, ” if this bill were to pass, would this prohibit the sale of the Bible, that teaches these things about sexual morality?”

Mr. Allen replied, “Well, literally, according to how this law is written, yes, it would. This is, you know, PC culture, politically correct culture, gone horribly awry.”

Snopes smugly informs us that, “California Assembly Bill 2943 does not mention the Bible, Christianity, or religion at all, so when Allen claimed that the legislation would ‘literally’ prohibit the sale of the Bible, he was stating something that is demonstrably and clearly false.”

Really?

In a brilliant takedown in The Federalist, Robert Gagnon explains why Snopes — not Mr. Allen — is dead wrong.

(EXCERPT) CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST....

[goatprairie]

While Snopes does a reasonably good job checking out urban myths and similar things, when it comes to politics, it definitely leans towards the left in interpreting events.
This case is similar to other cases I've read where if the Snopes checkers didn't find something explicitly stating something, it infers the event couldn't be possible or couldn't have happened.
They're like the liberal "fact-checkers" in some news orgs who discount everything done by conservatives.   Like tax cuts..."we found that Bob Smith of Mudbutt, Oregon didn't benefit from the recent Republican sponsored tax-cut. Therefore, there are no benefits to the tax cut."  That kind of specious conclusion.

[SirLinksALot]

SNOPES ON DID Hillary Clinton Give 20 Percent of United States’ Uranium to Russia in Exchange for Clinton Foundation Donations?

They ruled the above to be FALSE.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-uranium-russia-deal/

Here is an excerpt from their "analysis":

Additionally, a small amount of that exported uranium was, in fact, sold to other countries. According to a 2 November 2017 article in The Hill, Uranium One officials acknowledged that approximately 25 percent of the yellowcake exported for conversion was subsequently sold via “book transfer” to customers in Western Europe and Asia (yellowcake being a fungible commodity, that doesn’t necessarily translate to a physical transfer of the product, however).


To date, there is no evidence that any of this uranium made its way to Russia. An NRC spokesman cited by FactCheck.org in October 2017 reaffirmed Satorius’s assurances that “the U.S. government has not authorized any country to re-transfer U.S. uranium to Russia.” NRC officials also say they’re unaware of any Uranium One exports from the U.S. to foreign countries since 2014.

[ABX]

As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Yes, Snopes has and often does lean left.

However, one of their advantages is they offer citations to everything they post so while you don't have to (and shouldn't) blindly take their word for it, they are a good place to go in order to at least check the research and follow their citations to look at the evidence.

There have been cases where they have been very correct when some on the right screamed they were 'fake', and there have been times when they have been very wrong when liberals used them as a source.

They really got under the Right's skin when they called out a lot of the fake Obama birth certificates, student IDs and stuff that were going around as trolling games by 4Chan that some really, really wanted to believe. But, as the post above shows, they were also wrong regarding Uranium One.

But a few corrections to the claims, no, this isn't just 'a democrat couple and their cat'. The founders of Snopes (while it did start small) were registered Republicans, not Democrats. Since at least 2004, Snopes has been more than this couple, they now have a staff of about 20 people (last time I checked) and have a rather large internet forum.

One of the reasons they have leaned left is the left (DU types) joined the internet forum they have to submit articles and research and simply overwhelm the opinions. But there are Conservatives and Libertarians there too.

On balance, they are still one of the better sources to use, as long as you don't blindly follow them, use discernment and follow their citations to determine if their conclusion is legit.

As for what they are discussing here, the law in California, they seem to be more balanced than they are getting credit for. They are only reporting on the face value of the law, not making additional judgements as to how it can be used. One really can't ding them too much for keeping this at face value of what it says versus opinion of what it could turn into.

[Applewood]

I don't know of any 100% reliable fact checkers.  I often wonder, as the saying goes, who is fat checking the fact checkers. 

But I will say this:  During the 2016 presidential campaign, when Facebook was flooded with whacked out conspiracy theories about Ted Cruz --  many of which were spread by Trump and his supporters -- Snopes did a good job of refuting those theories.  Unfortunately, a lot of people still believed those conspiracy theories and I think some here still do. 

Snopes also tore apart the Alex Jones false flag operation at Sandy Hook theory and the photo of an alleged FEMA concentration camp building during the Obama administration (the building was a privately owned warehouse), among other fables.

[verga]

File this under the heading of DUH!

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Snopes is no more capable of spitting out truth than is Zuckerberg or Google.