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Best place to check for the latest in fake news is, as always, snopes.com I can't imagine the kind of pressure they've been under the past year to debunk all t
by michaelchisari 10y ago
Best place to check for the latest in fake news is, as always, snopes.com
I can't imagine the kind of pressure they've been under the past year to debunk all these absurd viral stories.
- protomyth 10y agoWhy do you trust snopes for political fact checking?
- DonaldFisk 10y agoThe point is, you shouldn't. He's generally pretty accurate though, because he actually investigates stories instead of just accepting them. And that's what you should do if you don't want to be caught out. Some stories are just urban myths (David Mikkelson's/Snopes's original focus), many are just press releases, some are planted by various PR outfits, others are planted by people with a particular agenda. Be skeptical, and investigate whenever you can.
- protomyth 10y agoHe? Kim LaCapria was doing a lot of the fact checking on political articles during the campaign.
- DonaldFisk 10y agoI'm not familiar with the other contributors. I know of David Mikkelson and Barbara Hamel from alt.folklore.urban, and snopes.com was founded by them, and was originally exclusively about urban myths (the "Archive" part).
- protomyth 10y agoI think one of the problems is that people who are familiar with the original contributors are transferring that trust to new staff doing the political side.
- michaelchisari 10y agoCan you share your reasons for not trusting snopes debunking of fake news?
- protomyth 10y agoBecause they hired an author who is a liberal pundit[1][2]. I'm fine with her being a liberal. I also fine with honest pundits of all stripes, but I'm not ok with that in a fact checking site. I think if you are going to claim to do political fact checking, you really need to hire someone who isn't a political pundit. It results in other pundit sites doing this[3]. 1) http://www.inquisitr.com/132960/good-job-teahadists-obama-advisor-acknowledges-tea-party-downgrade/ http://www.inquisitr.com/132960/good-job-teahadists-obama-ad... 2) http://www.inquisitr.com/402558/scandal-envy-behind-petraeus-drama-allegations-obama-ignored-benghazi/ http://www.inquisitr.com/402558/scandal-envy-behind-petraeus... 3) http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/28/snopes-caught-lying-about-lack-of-american-flags-at-democratic-convention/ http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/28/snopes-caught-lying-about-...
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- michaelchisari 10y agoI don't use them for political fact checking in the nuanced sense of, for instance, how much repealing Obamacare will add to the deficit. Something that is open for interpretation, difficult to nail down, and politically sensitive. That kind of thing is not their specialty. I do use them to see if headlines are completely made up. For instance, take the story, "FBI agent suspected in Hillary email leaks found dead in apartment in murder-suicide" This simply didn't happen, and the source is a website masquerading as a news organization. Snopes is good for rooting out stories such as this, that have no corroboration, no basis in fact or reality. http://www.snopes.com/fbi-agent-murder-suicide/ http://www.snopes.com/fbi-agent-murder-suicide/