Is Snopes polically biased?

[Ladewig]

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.

 

[Dr Adequate]

I need some help here. Is Snopes biased? All the research I have done seems to indicate that they do the best they can, and while not infallible, they are a good starting place to begin a fact-finding search.

Well one point you could make is that they seem to be nice enough to Bush. Looking at their file on him, they have shot down lots of derogatory emails like this:

* Recent study proves George W. Bush has the lowest IQ of all presidents of the past fifty years.

* Texas governor George W. Bush "refused to sell his home" to Blacks.

* President Bush misspoke at a right-to-life rally and repeatedly said "feces" instead of "feces".

... and so forth ... while verifying emails like this:

* During a hospital visit, President George W. Bush saluted an Army officer who had been badly injured during the September 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon.

* President George W. Bush has been nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

* In 2003, President and Mrs. Bush helped hand out Christmas presents to children of inmates.

... and so on.

Their whole Bush file is here. Let anyone who wants to try to show that they've been unfair.

 

[Dancing David]

Off-topic, you need to upgrade your browser/settings/security. I've been browsing Snopes all day and have experienced none of the above. On-page ads, certainly, but I won't begrudge any site that right. [bolding mine]

I got one pop in back with IE7 but that was all. Ooops, I had the Pop Blocker turned off, stupid OneCare installer.

 

[Tricky]

It probably seems (to some) that Snopes leans to the left these days because of so many crazy internet rumors flying around about Obama these days. With Bush, they never had to debunk stuff like they did with Obama, like:

• He is a Muslim
• He refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance
• He was born in Kenya
• He is funded by Hugo Chavez
• He was endorsed by the KKK (okay, maybe that one did fly around about Bush too.)
• He wrote that the US forefathers were against economic freedom
• He was a Black Panther
• He is selling B-52s to the Chinese
• He was going to require an oath of loyalty to the president rather than the US
• His election to the presidency caused the swine flu
• Nidal Hassan (the Fort Worth shooter) was his advisor
• He tried to repeal the laws of physics
• He was going to have his face added to Mount Rushmore
• He is not going to have a "Christmas Tree" but a "Holiday Tree"
• He took the oath of office on a Quran rather than a Bible

And dang it, but every single one of those was found false. If Snopes had been fair, they would have listed at least one of them as "true", right?

 

[SonOfLaertes]

It probably seems (to some) that Snopes leans to the left these days because of so many crazy internet rumors flying around about Obama these days. With Bush, they never had to debunk stuff like they did with Obama, like:

• He is a Muslim
• He refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance
• He was born in Kenya
• He is funded by Hugo Chavez
• He was endorsed by the KKK (okay, maybe that one did fly around about Bush too.)
• He wrote that the US forefathers were against economic freedom
• He was a Black Panther
• He is selling B-52s to the Chinese
• He was going to require an oath of loyalty to the president rather than the US
• His election to the presidency caused the swine flu
• Nidal Hassan (the Fort Worth shooter) was his advisor
• He tried to repeal the laws of physics
• He was going to have his face added to Mount Rushmore
• He is not going to have a "Christmas Tree" but a "Holiday Tree"
• He took the oath of office on a Quran rather than a Bible

And dang it, but every single one of those was found false. If Snopes had been fair, they would have listed at least one of them as "true", right?

Yeah, I think this is the problem area for Snopes. I have never seen so many "professional" smear mails cobbled together for any other subject, complete with "expert" quotes, "reliable" witnesses, and outrageous claims. There are so many of them that responding with Snopes' rebuttals begins to generate a "oh no, not Snopes again?" response.

Further to the point, I am seeing more and more e-mails which are intentionally put together to further woo-ish agenda, such as the heart care advice supposedly backed by Johns Hopkins I referenced earlier. The scary thing about them is the inclusion of fake experts and institutions which claim to back their agenda. These are crafted e-mails,put together with a certain cunning and knowledge of their target audience.

As with the Obama e-mails, a lot of the recipients simply do not want to have the e-mail exposed as fraudulent. Sometimes I feel like the bad guy by doing so, and wonder if I should just let the garbage flow.

 

[BenBurch]

... Pop-unders? That's so 2001. Learn how to internet.

What browser doesn't have a blocker for those, I wonder?

 

[SonOfLaertes]

Well one point you could make is that they seem to be nice enough to Bush. Looking at their file on him, they have shot down lots of derogatory emails like this:

* Recent study proves George W. Bush has the lowest IQ of all presidents of the past fifty years.

* Texas governor George W. Bush "refused to sell his home" to Blacks.

* President Bush misspoke at a right-to-life rally and repeatedly said "feces" instead of "feces".

... and so forth ... while verifying emails like this:

* During a hospital visit, President George W. Bush saluted an Army officer who had been badly injured during the September 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon.

* President George W. Bush has been nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

* In 2003, President and Mrs. Bush helped hand out Christmas presents to children of inmates.

... and so on.

Their whole Bush file is here. Let anyone who wants to try to show that they've been unfair.

I have pointed these out to a few of my friends. I think that the back and forth I have had with them over the past day or two has convinced them grudgingly that Snopes is pretty reliable.

They will jump on any chance to be able to consider Snopes unreliable, however, as they are tired of their pet "Obama is Muslim/Evil/a foreigner" e-mails being trashed.

 

[Travis]

I have pointed these out to a few of my friends. I think that the back and forth I have had with them over the past day or two has convinced them grudgingly that Snopes is pretty reliable.

They will jump on any chance to be able to consider Snopes unreliable, however, as they are tired of their pet "Obama is Muslim/Evil/a foreigner" e-mails being trashed.

I would advise them that it would be better if they stopped wanting untrue things about Obama to be true. That's just not healthy.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

On a bit of a derail, I think some of the factcheck.org articles show a strange bias. It's neither left nor right though. I'd call it the "fair and balanced" bias. They seem to think that if you catch one side in a lie you have to even it out with a lie from the other side, and that all misrepresentations of fact are the same.

For example, during the Kerry campaign, I recall where both sides cited numbers of how many Iraqi troops were trained and ready. (I don't recall the numbers--sorry.) Kerry cheated by rounding down the figure improperly to the lower thousand (like truncating the number, when rounding it up would've been called for--if the real number was 5600, Kerry said 5000 rather than 6000.) But the Bush campaign exaggerated the number by a couple of orders of magnitude. (If the number was 5600, he said something like 200,000.) Yes they were both falsehoods, but one was relatively minor, and the other was a whopper.

Again, I'm not saying they're biased to one side or another, but that they sometimes miss the point in an attempt to appear even-handed.

 

[daredelvis]

It probably seems (to some) that Snopes leans to the left these days because of so many crazy internet rumors flying around about Obama these days. With Bush, they never had to debunk stuff like they did with Obama, like:

• He is a Muslim
• He refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance
• He was born in Kenya
• He is funded by Hugo Chavez
• He was endorsed by the KKK (okay, maybe that one did fly around about Bush too.)
• He wrote that the US forefathers were against economic freedom
• He was a Black Panther
• He is selling B-52s to the Chinese
• He was going to require an oath of loyalty to the president rather than the US
• His election to the presidency caused the swine flu
• Nidal Hassan (the Fort Worth shooter) was his advisor
• He tried to repeal the laws of physics
• He was going to have his face added to Mount Rushmore
• He is not going to have a "Christmas Tree" but a "Holiday Tree"
• He took the oath of office on a Quran rather than a Bible

And dang it, but every single one of those was found false. If Snopes had been fair, they would have listed at least one of them as "true", right?

You forgot,

I'd thought it was common knowledge the Barbara Snopes is liberal. Something like contributions to the democratic party, plus a bit of a slant to just a few articles. Things like participant numbers in one of the marches in D.C. ? Seems I remember some hoo-hoo a couple years back.

Daredelvis

 

[SonOfLaertes]

I would advise them that it would be better if they stopped wanting untrue things about Obama to be true. That's just not healthy.

Maybe not healthy, but par for the course. There are a lot of people in this country who are quite simply terrified of Democratic control of the government.

These are good, sensible people who have bought into the Democrat's-are-going-to-spend-and-tax-this-country-into-ruin meme. They turn a blind eye to the contribution that Bush & Co. made towards our financial difficulties, and seize on any evidence of guilt they can pin on the "other side".

Maybe I mis-spoke: they don't want these e-mails to be true; they want as many people as possible to believe they are true, because in their hearts they believe that the wrong people are in control of the purse strings, and anything which hurts the other side is therefore justified. So they forward e-mails crafted by sympathetic fellows without concern for the truth.

 

[Beerina]

I haven't seen any "liberal bias" there.

They're even cleaner than Quackwatch in that respect, which has a couple of political bleats for government health care under their "Insurance watch" section, in addition to some good articles about scam-like behavior of said insurance companies.

 

[Travis]

Maybe not healthy, but par for the course. There are a lot of people in this country who are quite simply terrified of Democratic control of the government.

These are good, sensible people who have bought into the Democrat's-are-going-to-spend-and-tax-this-country-into-ruin meme. They turn a blind eye to the contribution that Bush & Co. made towards our financial difficulties, and seize on any evidence of guilt they can pin on the "other side".

Maybe I mis-spoke: they don't want these e-mails to be true; they want as many people as possible to believe they are true, because in their hearts they believe that the wrong people are in control of the purse strings, and anything which hurts the other side is therefore justified. So they forward e-mails crafted by sympathetic fellows without concern for the truth.

I just don't understand that. I mean both sides are prone to it but it always bugs me. When I encountered obvious untruths about Bush I always did my best to refute them even though I hadn't voted for the guy and was not a Republican.

 

[SonOfLaertes]

I just don't understand that. I mean both sides are prone to it but it always bugs me. When I encountered obvious untruths about Bush I always did my best to refute them even though I hadn't voted for the guy and was not a Republican.

I'm with you there. Personally I distrust both sides equally. But I see this attitude everywhere. The Democrats themselves are to blame , as they are simply not as good as the Republicans at painting the other side with a broad brush.

When the Republicans were in control they spent money like water, and severely disappointed my expectations. But the Dems can't seem to get that message out there, and most people still see the Repubs as fiscally responsible. And so the pendulum will swing back come November,2010.

Help me, Obi-wan Independent Voters. You're my only hope.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Barbara Mikkelson is a Canadian citizen --.

And therefore, obviously a liberal!

Snopes may not be "purely neutral" but I have detected no axe to grind in the five years I have been using it on and off.

I'll offer a target: Snopes is fair, to within 1.5 to 2 standard deviations, possiblly better.

DR

 

[Stellafane]

Is Snopes politically biased?

No, that's just an urban legend.

 

[SonOfLaertes]

And therefore, obviously a liberal!

Snopes may not be "purely neutral" but I have detected no axe to grind in the five years I have been using it on and off.

I'll offer a target: Snopes is fair, to within 1.5 to 2 standard deviations, possiblly better.

DR

While trying to gather opinions over the last few days from various sources, the thing that strikes me the most is the lack of serious negative attitudes towards Snopes ( exepting the e-mail which started this whole thing ). I can't find much praise from the hard right, or the hard left, but I can't find any serious condemnation either. As I have said, this fact in and of itself would suggest a general acceptance of Snopes.

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.

 

[thaiboxerken]

The folks that think Snopes is liberally biased are the same folks that think Fox News is fair and balanced.

 

[Ziggurat]

And dang it, but every single one of those was found false. If Snopes had been fair, they would have listed at least one of them as "true", right?

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.

 

[SonOfLaertes]

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.

I took Tricky's last line to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but perhaps I am mistaken.