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> As any one who’s read snopes or fact check, while the fact checks often point out actually incorrect information, some of the time, they reframe the question/

> As any one who’s read snopes or fact check, while the fact checks often point out actually incorrect information, some of the time, they reframe the question/narrative, assume an inaccurate scope or apply semantics in a convenient way and label something that isn’t necessarily false as not false that reflects the bias of the author. Do you have an example of this, on Snopes or another fact checking website?

TheAceOfHearts 2y ago
The Media Very Rarely Lies [0] explains how the game is played and it provides a couple examples. [0] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-media-very-rarely-lies https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-media-very-rarely-lies
rufus_foreman 2y ago
allsides.com has done reviews of the fact checking websites. The last one for Snopes was in 2021, it says: "We reviewed the numerous instances of Snopes' left-wing bias that we found during our June 2020 Editorial Review, such as slant. We also noted a number of times that Snopes had recently interpreted things in favor of the left, including when it "fact checked" a subjective opinion on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), when it defended Gov. Andrew Cuomo by saying an accurate tweet about him was "Mostly False," and when it "fact-checked" satire from humor website The Babylon Bee (an entry Snopes then had to edit following criticism)." -- https://www.allsides.com/news-source/snopes https://www.allsides.com/news-source/snopes They claim Snopes has a "Lean Left" bias.
- GenerativeAl 2y ago
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- yyggvbb 2y ago
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- cortesoft 2y ago
  So a few things... one, I don't think you can say a fact checker is slanted one way or another by finding a few examples of a bias; how do we know there isn't an equal or greater number of instances where the examples slant the other way? You would need a systemic analysis of all the articles with some rubric for grading. Second, I find issue with the examples they did use. They say the tweet was actually true, but it doesn't seem that way to me. The tweet argued that Cuomo said that the vaccine being developed under Trump was bad, but the thing he actually said was that he thought the roll out plan would be bad. Very different.
  - rufus_foreman 2y ago
    >> I don't think you can say a fact checker is slanted one way or another by finding a few examples of a bias Allsides does a systematic review. Those are a few examples from the review. You can read about their process for determining bias at https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-rating-methods https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-rating-method.... One part of the process is an editorial review: "The panel looks for common types of media bias such as slant, spin, sensationalism, and story choice. We review the outlet’s homepage, headlines, recent articles, photos, and other content dating as far back as six months using online archival tools like the Wayback Machine. Taking into account all perspectives, panelists individually assign a number, between -6.0 and +6.0, that they believe best represents the bias of the media outlet. These numerical ratings are then transcribed into a weighted average." >> The tweet argued that Cuomo said that the vaccine being developed under Trump was bad, but the thing he actually said was that he thought the roll out plan would be bad. The statement that Snopes fact checked was "Did Gov. Cuomo Say It Was 'Bad News' Pfizer Vaccine Progress Came Under Trump?". Cuomo said "The good news is the Pfizer tests look good, and we’ll have have a vaccine shortly. The bad news is that it’s about two months before Joe Biden takes over, and that means this administration is going to be implementing a vaccine plan." If someone is going to call the original statement "Mostly False", then yes, I would consider them to have a left bias. Cuomo is saying that it is good that we had vaccine progress, but bad that it happened before Biden was President. That sounds like an awful thing to say, and from my perspective, Snopes is covering for Cuomo who said something he would probably in retrospect like to have said in a different way.
daft_pink 2y ago
I would say that reading about the fact checks of the Wuhan lab leak theory during the pandemic were a pretty good example of this, where just because something might likely be of "natural origin" doesn't mean that it didn't escape from a lab. So they would criticize someone who said it leaked out of a lab with evidence that suggested that the virus wasn't man made. However, that evidence doesn't really have much to do with: 1. Could a virus of natural origin escaped from a virus lab unmodified? 2. Could a lab that was engaged in research trying to modify a virus have accidentally let the virus escape and the research was the actual source of the virus? To be fair, I personally don't think anyone can say for sure what really happened, but by manipulating the scope of the question to a very narrow man made virus escaped from a lab when the original speaker just said it leaked from a lab, your claim can easily be labeled as false.

TheAceOfHearts 2y ago

The Media Very Rarely Lies [0] explains how the game is played and it provides a couple examples. [0] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-media-very-rarely-lies https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-media-very-rarely-lies

rufus_foreman 2y ago

allsides.com has done reviews of the fact checking websites. The last one for Snopes was in 2021, it says: "We reviewed the numerous instances of Snopes' left-wing bias that we found during our June 2020 Editorial Review, such as slant. We also noted a number of times that Snopes had recently interpreted things in favor of the left, including when it "fact checked" a subjective opinion on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), when it defended Gov. Andrew Cuomo by saying an accurate tweet about him was "Mostly False," and when it "fact-checked" satire from humor website The Babylon Bee (an entry Snopes then had to edit following criticism)." -- https://www.allsides.com/news-source/snopes https://www.allsides.com/news-source/snopes They claim Snopes has a "Lean Left" bias.

GenerativeAl 2y ago
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yyggvbb 2y ago
[flagged]
cortesoft 2y ago
So a few things... one, I don't think you can say a fact checker is slanted one way or another by finding a few examples of a bias; how do we know there isn't an equal or greater number of instances where the examples slant the other way? You would need a systemic analysis of all the articles with some rubric for grading. Second, I find issue with the examples they did use. They say the tweet was actually true, but it doesn't seem that way to me. The tweet argued that Cuomo said that the vaccine being developed under Trump was bad, but the thing he actually said was that he thought the roll out plan would be bad. Very different.
- rufus_foreman 2y ago
  >> I don't think you can say a fact checker is slanted one way or another by finding a few examples of a bias Allsides does a systematic review. Those are a few examples from the review. You can read about their process for determining bias at https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-rating-methods https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-rating-method.... One part of the process is an editorial review: "The panel looks for common types of media bias such as slant, spin, sensationalism, and story choice. We review the outlet’s homepage, headlines, recent articles, photos, and other content dating as far back as six months using online archival tools like the Wayback Machine. Taking into account all perspectives, panelists individually assign a number, between -6.0 and +6.0, that they believe best represents the bias of the media outlet. These numerical ratings are then transcribed into a weighted average." >> The tweet argued that Cuomo said that the vaccine being developed under Trump was bad, but the thing he actually said was that he thought the roll out plan would be bad. The statement that Snopes fact checked was "Did Gov. Cuomo Say It Was 'Bad News' Pfizer Vaccine Progress Came Under Trump?". Cuomo said "The good news is the Pfizer tests look good, and we’ll have have a vaccine shortly. The bad news is that it’s about two months before Joe Biden takes over, and that means this administration is going to be implementing a vaccine plan." If someone is going to call the original statement "Mostly False", then yes, I would consider them to have a left bias. Cuomo is saying that it is good that we had vaccine progress, but bad that it happened before Biden was President. That sounds like an awful thing to say, and from my perspective, Snopes is covering for Cuomo who said something he would probably in retrospect like to have said in a different way.

daft_pink 2y ago

I would say that reading about the fact checks of the Wuhan lab leak theory during the pandemic were a pretty good example of this, where just because something might likely be of "natural origin" doesn't mean that it didn't escape from a lab. So they would criticize someone who said it leaked out of a lab with evidence that suggested that the virus wasn't man made. However, that evidence doesn't really have much to do with: 1. Could a virus of natural origin escaped from a virus lab unmodified? 2. Could a lab that was engaged in research trying to modify a virus have accidentally let the virus escape and the research was the actual source of the virus? To be fair, I personally don't think anyone can say for sure what really happened, but by manipulating the scope of the question to a very narrow man made virus escaped from a lab when the original speaker just said it leaked from a lab, your claim can easily be labeled as false.