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Is Snopes polically biased?

Ziggurat said:
Your argument is actually weaker than you suppose. Balance is not exhibited by mislabeling a false statement as true, but one could claim that including statements which ARE true but unflattering would be required for balance. For example, Obama won his first election by having his opponent kicked off the ballot.
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Except that, as has been pointed out, the function of Snopes is to verify or debunk viral emails. It isn't their job to produce a complete biography of Barack Obama.
 
Dr Adequate said:
Except that, as has been pointed out, the function of Snopes is to verify or debunk viral emails. It isn't their job to produce a complete biography of Barack Obama.
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True. But they aren't obliged to debunk every email they hear about. They can select which emails to debunk and which to ignore. Bias could affect that. Does it? I don't know. I'm not sure we could tell from outside, and certainly not without considerable effort at surveying viral emails, which few people (me included) have any interest in doing.

My point isn't that I think Snopes is biased, merely that it certainly could be, and that Tricky's insinuation about the relevance of bias and balance doesn't really cover the range of possibilities. But even if it is biased, that doesn't mean it can't be useful or reliable.
 
Ziggurat said:
True. But they aren't obliged to debunk every email they hear about. They can select which emails to debunk and which to ignore. Bias could affect that. Does it? I don't know. I'm not sure we could tell from outside, and certainly not without considerable effort at surveying viral emails, which few people (me included) have any interest in doing.

My point isn't that I think Snopes is biased, merely that it certainly could be, and that Tricky's insinuation about the relevance of bias and balance doesn't really cover the range of possibilities. But even if it is biased, that doesn't mean it can't be useful or reliable.
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Generally, if I recieve chain mail, whether politically based or not, I can find an analysis of it in Snopes. I'm talking about chain mail which has obviously gone through many iterations of forwarding, mind you, not something I've received with only one or two degress of seperation.

So I don't think Snopes is picking and choosing the e-mails they analyze.
 
This article about Bush and his family visiting one of the Fort Hood survivors might help convince some of the people who think Snopes are biased. It seems to be written from a very positive view point.
 
I would agree that Snopes is a very neutral site, perhaps the most even-handed I have ever seen. And yet every second topic on its Wikipedia discussion page is a cry for Wiki to include full details of the many dark crimes the Mikkelsons have committed, few of which are ever substantiated or elaborated on.

I've seen a lot of criticism of Snopes from both sides of the aisle - as has been noted, they used to have a whole thread on their forum dedicated to the more rabid mail they got. What struck me was that every time they debunked a smear on a Republican, they were accused of being neo-con flag-waving homophobic warmongers, and every time they debunked a smear on a Democrat they were accused of being terrorist-hugging Marxist Islamist America-haters. It's hard not to think fondly of people who have such a bipartisan haters' club.
 
SonOfLaertes said:
My friends are reasonably intelligent people. If a conservative friend were shown a video with, say, Bill O'Reilly using Snopes as a reference source, I would have ammunition to refute some anti-Snopes rebuttals.
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See you made a mistake here, Bill O'Reilly doesn't use sources.
 
SonOfLaertes said:
I do worry that the appearance of that e-mail may pre-sage the start of a smear campaign against a tool which handily tackles other smear campaigns.
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Yup, this is an emerging tactic of the wingnut crowd: don't argue facts, instead go after & smear any institution which doesn't cater to your ideology. If the respectability of the institution is called into question, then the need for dealing with pesky facts & research go right out the window, and you're free to make up whatever "truth" caters to your particular ideology.
 
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Bad News? Kill The Messenger!

They are taking a page from the Church of Scientology, "attack the attacker and never defend your own position". These "dead agent" attacks should be seen as what they are unsubstantiated BS. If your friends want to claim Snopes is bias make them produce hard evidence a chain mail letter isn't evidence. I'd hold their feet to the fire too they would have to convince me with facts not innuendo. They'd first need to tell me how many stories Snopes has solved then they would need to show me the alleged bias in the stories they covered and how that bias invalidated the facts. These people can't attack the facts so they cry bias as if their opinions are middle of the road. Cops are bias against criminals but it doesn't invalidate their arrests only facts can do that.

I don't get chain emails because I've made it clear to everyone that I will bomb them with automated replies if they try to waste my time with boilerplate drivel the same goes for "joke of the day" or any other such nonsense. Chain emails are the epitome of lazy debating people rarely bother to question them if it supports their preconceived notions off it goes to everyone they know. When has an email chain ever produced factual information that became indisputable mainstream knowledge? I'm not saying it has never happened but it hasn't happened enough to stick in my memory.

As it has been said before you are wasting your time presenting facts when they will just be countered with irrelevant strawmen. Remember what Schiller said, "Against stupidity the very Gods themselves toil in vain."
 
GanipGnop said:
As it has been said before you are wasting your time presenting facts when they will just be countered with irrelevant strawmen. Remember what Schiller said, "Against stupidity the very Gods themselves toil in vain."
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I love that quote :D
 
Ziggurat said:
Your argument is actually weaker than you suppose. Balance is not exhibited by mislabeling a false statement as true, but one could claim that including statements which ARE true but unflattering would be required for balance. For example, Obama won his first election by having his opponent kicked off the ballot.
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Your argument is pretty weak too. Even if Obama pointed out some legal problems with his opponent (and I'm not sure he was the instigator) it is the law that had him kicked off the ballot. If Obama had made a spurious charge, it would not have happened.

So perhaps such a statement would be unflattering, but not true.
 
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Ladewig said:
I had heard this particular criticism back in the Bush administration when Snopes listed the Ashcroft-thinks-calico-cats-are-demonic thing as undetermined. Pointed criticisms about this urban legend led them to change the status to false. I believe that these days they are as objective as they can be.
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Maybe they changed it because Ashcroft himself denied it. :rolleyes:

Ashcroft FAQ WhiteHouse web page
Bob Bucklew, from Cleveland, OH writes:
I have heard that you think that calico cats are evil. I have looked in the bible, and can't find anything about them - what's up?

Attorney General Ashcroft:
You know, I'm glad you asked that question. This whole nonsense about me thinking that calico cats are demonic is nothing more than a nonsense rumor. It was first reported by that limey rag The Guardian, and has since been embraced and propagated by every loony tunes liberal who wants to smear me. Let me state for the record right here - it is false. Furthermore, if at some point in the indeterminate future, some trash TV tabloid "breaks" a story with video of someone who looks just like me, in the back yard of a house that looks just like mine, speaking in tongues and feeding a whole litter of calico kittens into a John Deere yard mulcher, that too will be will be a big old load of hooey. Capiche? Good.
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Could be rather CT of you to think it was changed because of political pressure.
 
Ladewig said:
You quoted a parody site.
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It looked real. :o

Oh well.

Here's Maureen Dowd's NYTs column saying she asked and was told the rumor was not true:
Mindy Tucker, then Mr. Ashcroft's press secretary, told me he had laughed and said it was silly.
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My point is the same. A direct question to Ashcroft settles the issue, it shouldn't leave it as "undetermined" unless there was some evidence Ashcroft was lying.
 
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Slayhamlet said:
Do you even read what you quote?
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Right, if you've never missed anything like "Officious" in the logo box as a clue a site was a parody, then I'd say you don't get on the Net much, or, you spend waaaay too much time looking for a source on a trivial matter.
 
Snopes has debunked a lot of the right wing propaganda regarding Obama, like the birther nonsense, which undoubtedly makes them "liberal" in a lot of conservatives eyes. Most conservatives I know think that if you don't tow the Republican line 100 percent of the time, you might as well be a card carrying communist.
 
Renfield said:
Snopes has debunked a lot of the right wing propaganda regarding Obama, like the birther nonsense, which undoubtedly makes them "liberal" in a lot of conservatives eyes. Most conservatives I know think that if you don't tow the Republican line 100 percent of the time, you might as well be a card carrying communist.
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That's just silly.

It's only 80% of the time.
 
SonOfLaertes said:
If a conservative friend were shown a video with, say, Bill O'Reilly using Snopes as a reference source, I would have ammunition to refute some anti-Snopes rebuttals.
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It was a billion years ago, in internet time, but O'Reilly did once reference a snopes source. Unfortunately, the only reference I can find right now is MediaMatters, but here is what he said:
O'REILLY: Time now for "The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day": setting the record straight on Jane Fonda. Now, last night I told Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine that I was not willing to give Ms. Fonda a pass on the accusation she turned over notes from American POWs to the North Vietnamese during her trip to Hanoi.

A web site called Snopes.com has investigated and debunked that accusation. They say it's not true.

Well, we decided to research it. We spent the day doing it. And the indication is that Snopes is correct! The story is bogus. So at this point, lacking any definable evidence to the contrary, Jane Fonda did not turn over any POW notes to the Vietnamese.

We're happy to clarify the record. It would be ridiculous not to do so. All right. Way to go, Snopes.com.
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