6 ms·

I have kind of soured on snopes since the 2016 election. Their political fact-checking includes a heavy dose of spin, framing issues with certain wording so tha

I have kind of soured on snopes since the 2016 election. Their political fact-checking includes a heavy dose of spin, framing issues with certain wording so that they can say "mostly false" with a big red X on their own strawman, so that you have to read between the lines to realize that what's true is actually the crux of the matter. Snopes used to strictly be a site you linked someone to disprove urban legends, and that good reputation is now being wielded in a partisan political battle

dkonofalski 7y ago
>framing issues with certain wording I've seen this repeated a few times now. Can you provide an example?
- papreclip 7y ago
  https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dems-impeach-gop-presidents/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dems-impeach-gop-president... They haven't said anything untruthful here. But imagine the site were run by republicans - the framing would be different. The claim would be "5 of 6" instead of "every", allowing them to print a big green checkmark graphic, and supporting details for each attempt
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    I don't understand. The graphic included in that article shows the claim which is that Democrats have filed for impeachment for every Republican President. That's not a factual or accurate claim. If the claim was different then of course the result would be different. If anything, I think this favors the opposite of what you're saying since not only do they have varying degrees of truth (as opposed to simply saying "This is a lie") and they provide both a description of why they say it's "Mostly False" and sources for each claim. It's not perfect but this doesn't seem like a good example of bias or "framing" like you claim.
    - beerandt 7y ago
      That's the point, it's selectively biased in what version of a claim to "fact-check."
      - dkonofalski 7y ago
        That is complete and utter nonsense. The version of the claim that's being fact-checked is the one that's shown in the article. Again, unless you have some evidence to suggest that that's been changed nefariously, your criticism is completely without merit.
  - nickthemagicman 7y ago
    They're literally responding to a republican meme that phrases the question exactly that way? The meme itself is posted in that page. I think you might be projecting.
    - papreclip 7y ago
      To me there's not such a big difference between resorting to a totally original straw man and picking the weakest argument among those different individuals on the other side of party lines have put forward. This snopes article serves as a catchall for claims about democratic attempts to impeach. There's no separate article for a different wording of the meme. And even if this were the only way anyone had worded the claim, it still merits a "partially true" or "mostly true". I deliberately avoided putting specific examples in my first post because I didn't want to quibble over the specifics. Spin is spin, it's not outright lying. Snopes isn't going to bend the truth to such a degree that a democrat, when confronted with the article, would be forced to admit they are dirty rotten liars.
      - dkonofalski 7y ago
        >And even if this were the only way anyone had worded the claim, it still merits a "partially true" or "mostly true". How so? At best, only 2 of the last 6 Presidents were actually called for impeachment by the Democratic party and, at worst, it was 3 if you count Nixon which was bi-partisan. How does that make the claim, in any way, "mostly true" or even "partially true"?
      - nickthemagicman 7y ago
        > democrat, when confronted with the article, would be forced to admit they are dirty rotten liars. And there you have it. I think your objectivity might be a little questionable. Reality has as known liberal bias.
- aaron695 7y ago
  The Babylon Bee is an Onion like paper. It's not left wing. Snopes has attacked them multiple times saying False. A logical person would not consider satirical being False. This allows/causes Facebook to delete their content https://reason.com/video/the-babylon-bee-satirizes-the-absurdities-of-american-politics/ https://reason.com/video/the-babylon-bee-satirizes-the-absur...
equalunique 7y ago
Yes, maybe we have seen the same articles by them. The headlines will say "X is FALSE" implying that a claim is unilaterally false, while one can see in the article's text that it's actually half-true, even more than half-true in some cases.
- smsm42 7y ago
  Or entirely true but they think it may lead somebody to a wrong conclusion so they declare it mostly false by implication. Or here they are actually declaring facts are not that important, much more important thing is feelings: https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/10/10/facts-and-data-arent-enough-to-combat-fake-news/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/10/10/facts-and-data-arent-... (yes, I know it's guest article, but they chose to publish it) And the way to do it? Check out this spectacular "fact check" where they say "lacks concrete evidence but alludes to a deeper truth": https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/colonel-sanders-kfc-miss-childress/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/colonel-sanders-kfc-miss-c... And then their obnoxious habit of "fact checking" satirical publications (which they tried to pass on as actual fact check, but after being called on it resorted by just putting a label "yes, it's satire" and pretending they are doing valuable service by that).
  - beerandt 7y ago
    They're pretty much all guest articles now. It's just an excuse. Same tactic as NYT publishing so much under "opinion."
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    >actually declaring facts are not that important, That's not at all what the article states and you stating that in your response puts into question the rest of it. Edit: After reading the other article too, I can't see what your complaint here is. The claim is unproven and the article expounds on exactly why they made that assessment.
    - smsm42 7y ago
      The claim does not have any evidence for it whatsoever. However, instead of stating it as a fact, Snopes starts to editorialize about "deeper truth" in it, which it doesn't do in other cases where claim is presented without ay evidence. The fact check would be "false" or at least "unproven" (if Snopes would be consistent assigning "unproven" to every claim having no evidence behind it) and leave editorializing to non-fact-checkers.
im3w1l 7y ago
It's the Peter Principle in action. Facebook promoted them to their level of incompetence.
smsm42 7y ago
If they stayed with urban legends and non-political hoaxes, they'd probably be now an example of rare trustworthy factchecking site without a political spin. But getting into politics was too juicy a piece of traffic to resist. So now they're just one of the pack.
- papreclip 7y ago
  The site creators also are/were fairly political people; one of them ran for president one year, IIRC.

dkonofalski 7y ago

>framing issues with certain wording I've seen this repeated a few times now. Can you provide an example?

papreclip 7y ago
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dems-impeach-gop-presidents/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dems-impeach-gop-president... They haven't said anything untruthful here. But imagine the site were run by republicans - the framing would be different. The claim would be "5 of 6" instead of "every", allowing them to print a big green checkmark graphic, and supporting details for each attempt
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  I don't understand. The graphic included in that article shows the claim which is that Democrats have filed for impeachment for every Republican President. That's not a factual or accurate claim. If the claim was different then of course the result would be different. If anything, I think this favors the opposite of what you're saying since not only do they have varying degrees of truth (as opposed to simply saying "This is a lie") and they provide both a description of why they say it's "Mostly False" and sources for each claim. It's not perfect but this doesn't seem like a good example of bias or "framing" like you claim.
  - beerandt 7y ago
    That's the point, it's selectively biased in what version of a claim to "fact-check."
    - dkonofalski 7y ago
      That is complete and utter nonsense. The version of the claim that's being fact-checked is the one that's shown in the article. Again, unless you have some evidence to suggest that that's been changed nefariously, your criticism is completely without merit.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  They're literally responding to a republican meme that phrases the question exactly that way? The meme itself is posted in that page. I think you might be projecting.
  - papreclip 7y ago
    To me there's not such a big difference between resorting to a totally original straw man and picking the weakest argument among those different individuals on the other side of party lines have put forward. This snopes article serves as a catchall for claims about democratic attempts to impeach. There's no separate article for a different wording of the meme. And even if this were the only way anyone had worded the claim, it still merits a "partially true" or "mostly true". I deliberately avoided putting specific examples in my first post because I didn't want to quibble over the specifics. Spin is spin, it's not outright lying. Snopes isn't going to bend the truth to such a degree that a democrat, when confronted with the article, would be forced to admit they are dirty rotten liars.
    - dkonofalski 7y ago
      >And even if this were the only way anyone had worded the claim, it still merits a "partially true" or "mostly true". How so? At best, only 2 of the last 6 Presidents were actually called for impeachment by the Democratic party and, at worst, it was 3 if you count Nixon which was bi-partisan. How does that make the claim, in any way, "mostly true" or even "partially true"?
    - nickthemagicman 7y ago
      > democrat, when confronted with the article, would be forced to admit they are dirty rotten liars. And there you have it. I think your objectivity might be a little questionable. Reality has as known liberal bias.
aaron695 7y ago
The Babylon Bee is an Onion like paper. It's not left wing. Snopes has attacked them multiple times saying False. A logical person would not consider satirical being False. This allows/causes Facebook to delete their content https://reason.com/video/the-babylon-bee-satirizes-the-absurdities-of-american-politics/ https://reason.com/video/the-babylon-bee-satirizes-the-absur...

equalunique 7y ago

Yes, maybe we have seen the same articles by them. The headlines will say "X is FALSE" implying that a claim is unilaterally false, while one can see in the article's text that it's actually half-true, even more than half-true in some cases.

smsm42 7y ago
Or entirely true but they think it may lead somebody to a wrong conclusion so they declare it mostly false by implication. Or here they are actually declaring facts are not that important, much more important thing is feelings: https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/10/10/facts-and-data-arent-enough-to-combat-fake-news/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/10/10/facts-and-data-arent-... (yes, I know it's guest article, but they chose to publish it) And the way to do it? Check out this spectacular "fact check" where they say "lacks concrete evidence but alludes to a deeper truth": https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/colonel-sanders-kfc-miss-childress/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/colonel-sanders-kfc-miss-c... And then their obnoxious habit of "fact checking" satirical publications (which they tried to pass on as actual fact check, but after being called on it resorted by just putting a label "yes, it's satire" and pretending they are doing valuable service by that).
- beerandt 7y ago
  They're pretty much all guest articles now. It's just an excuse. Same tactic as NYT publishing so much under "opinion."
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  >actually declaring facts are not that important, That's not at all what the article states and you stating that in your response puts into question the rest of it. Edit: After reading the other article too, I can't see what your complaint here is. The claim is unproven and the article expounds on exactly why they made that assessment.
  - smsm42 7y ago
    The claim does not have any evidence for it whatsoever. However, instead of stating it as a fact, Snopes starts to editorialize about "deeper truth" in it, which it doesn't do in other cases where claim is presented without ay evidence. The fact check would be "false" or at least "unproven" (if Snopes would be consistent assigning "unproven" to every claim having no evidence behind it) and leave editorializing to non-fact-checkers.

im3w1l 7y ago

It's the Peter Principle in action. Facebook promoted them to their level of incompetence.

smsm42 7y ago

If they stayed with urban legends and non-political hoaxes, they'd probably be now an example of rare trustworthy factchecking site without a political spin. But getting into politics was too juicy a piece of traffic to resist. So now they're just one of the pack.

papreclip 7y ago
The site creators also are/were fairly political people; one of them ran for president one year, IIRC.