Of all of the interesting stuff I have seen in regards to President Obama one of most perplexing out there is about Snopes.com.
For those of us who routinely get spam e-mail with bad information, Snopes.com has been useful in debunking the urban legends racing across the internet.
Image from snopes.com
I recently had it spat out at me that Snopes is funded by George Soros, a liberal rich guy who allegedly funds various outlets. Guess who started this one?
Wait for it!
One of our favorite conservative talkers – Glenn Beck. Or not.
Traces back to his show on May 31, 2010, Beck stated that Soros backs Snopes.com and therefore should not be trusted as this makes them a liberal shill. In the next statement, Beck states that he and his team uses Snopes.com all of the time for information, saying what a great resource Snopes can be.
Before that, Another source states this information as well in May 2010. What this blogger fails to do is find out that Snopes co-founder Gregg Mikkelson is actually a register republican voter. And that his wife, Barbara is Canadian and ineligible to vote here. Truthorfiction.com found origins of the Snopes/Soros dating back to 2008.
The problem is there are many emails about Obama and what he said or did here or there. People who are politically opposed do not want to believe he is who he is. They can’t believe the paper work that is out there, the history that is out there. How can that not be his picture on a Columbia ID in a style that was not even used by Columbia before 1996.
According to the haters, Obama seemingly failed up the ladder after taking advantage of the affirmative action advantages available during his college years. And mixed in all of that are the fact checking sites which deny some of the crazier stuff.
So what have I found out? Media Matters is funded by Soros, Snopes is not. FactCheck is partially funded by Annenberg Foundation, whose head gave money to John McCain in his presidential run, but Snopes is not. TruthOrFiction has verified that Snopes is who they say they say they are and not funded by Soros.
With that in mind I checked out how Snopes treated former President Bush. If they really are a liberal front, would they not make sure to print falsehoods about Bush such as using the word ‘feces’ instead of ‘fetus.’ Or holding a book upside down.
What I found is that Snopes was fair to Bush. Stories that would make him look like the village idiot or a racist were proven false. Some stories that put him high on a pedestal were proven false. And some that show him as a human with good qualities were proven true.
Then I checked to see what they have on Mitt Romney. Again, it looked pretty fair and balanced.
Snopes appears to tell the truth about democrats and republicans.
So what does that tell a person?
There must be a secret conspiracy somewhere. No media outlet could be that unbiased, could it?
Notes from Rumbly Cottage 
This is just further proof one cannot believe everything one reads – regardless of the source. Nowadays, everyone is quick to reference Wikipedia as a source of factual information. I don’t know. I find I am left shaking my head in uncertainty, not sure what information is true in the sphere of the internet.
I still trust Snopes but I am also willing to do my own digging. There is always another source. Wikipedia just makes people lazy. And I never trust anything out of Glenn Beck.
No, this article is NOT proof of what you’re saying. Of course nobody should believe everything they read from every source. And this article isn’t about “Wikipedia,” either. This article IS about SNOPES and states ENEQUIVOCALLY that, upon close examination, SNOPES turns out to be honest and truthful and not slanted toward any party or ideology — although Snopes co-founder Gregg Mikkelson is actually a registered Republican. So, Lenore Diane/Diane Lenore, you can always go to Snopes when in doubt!
I first encountered the conservative conspiracy theory about Snopes a few years ago, when I still worked in newspapers. Some reader called in with a supposed tip. I patiently explained it was just a rumor that had been going around for years (I think it was the rumor about street gangs driving around at night without their headlines on, and if you flash your lights at them, they’ll shoot you). I I referred the caller to Snopes.com. She said, “Well, I don’t believe them. They’ve got their own agenda.”
P.S. The street gang rumor isn’t true.
When the rumor you want to believe proves to be false, it must be the checker who has the political agenda and not you.
Dang, the gang rumor is not true? I bet the one where a gang member hides under your car and slashes your ankle is not true, either.
I rely on Snopes to tell the other side of the story. It is still up to me to figure out which side I believe. That is pretty much what the internet is all about, isn’t it – lots of information, but most of it is the bias of an individual writer. The truth is out there, but it will never be easy to find.
Margie, you are so correct. I really watch which websites are handing out the information and try to avoid those that lean too far one way or the other. Someone asked what I listen to on the radio and I responded straight news or a specific station because the others tend to be too polorizing. Which explains why I listen to sports radio some days as well.
Sounds like what you’re saying is that you can pretty much expect everybody to lie and that you can’t trust anyone or anything. What a hell of a world to try to live in! No, Margie, what you do first is go to a place you trust, like Snopes. Then, you go to the source and look for the actual quote or written record, not merely somebody’s opinion or interpretation of what someone did or said.
Louis – I didn’t suggest that everybody lies. I said there are at least two sides to every story, and it is up to me to look at all sides and decide which is the truth I choose. My truth might not be the same as yours, but that doesn’t mean yours is a lie.
Louis, Margie is making a good point. One should research whenever possible. Please do not attack people on my comment board. That behavior is not tolerated here.
I listen to Glenn Beck once in a while, and he finds a way to connect anything to George Soros. It’s literally like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with him, except with Soros.
I know I should listen to some of these conservative talkers some of the time but I get worked up whenever I do. I have low blood pressure and this gets it going pretty quick. Maybe sometime I should try to listen to Beck but only after a glass of wine or two.
Oh, I can’t blame you for not listening. I do listen for short amounts of time, but Beck is so manipulative and slimy that I usually have to turn him off after a few minutes. There’s only so much venom I can take.
How many showers can one take in a day?
Why? Why would you keep going back to a KNOWN, consistent LIAR for info — unless you want to know what they think so you can put your faith in its opposite.
Louis,
I believe in listening to the other side to give them a chance to change my opinion. I like knowing what I am up against. It is called being an informed participant. If you are here to take part in the conversation, I suggestion you lose the confrontational attitude so that people do not try to verbally slap you upside the head.
I rely on Snopes.com too. And it sounds like you could do research for them. Good job!
That throws quite an interesting light on the information snopes provides. Curious.
I know. You have to look at who or what organization is providing that information. When I am searching around for information, I tend to look at the provider. Right=wing or left-wing will have their own spin. I appreciate Snopes for being non-partisan.
Agreed. Nothing like research.
And how do you “KNOW” Snopes is non-partisan? Everybody, including you, have a spin on everything based on their background and education, or lack thereof. Everything need to be taken with “a grain or two of salt”. Fifty people can view the SAME incident and when asked, you WILL get fifty different observations. So what makes one true and the other untrue? Facts or your belief of facts? Your website states the founder is registered republican, another site states, Independent, so which is it?
Tom, when other fact checking sites defend another – that would be the competition – chances are they say who they are. The people that I talked about state who funds them and it has been proven by snopes’ competition they are not funded by Soros.
Just because they answer questions that do not match the answers you want does not make them a part of a greater conspiracy. I hate, hate George W. Bush for what he did to our country. And yet there are stories on Snopes that show him in a positive light. The same goes for Romney. If a group is willing to be non-partisan and shows it in their actions, then maybe they are just that. What about the sites you visit? Are they willing to look at a subject objectively or with their slant at all times?
Tom (of August 10, 2012 at 4:18 pm):
You wrote: “And how do you “KNOW” Snopes is non-partisan? Everybody, including you, have a spin on everything based on their background and education, or lack thereof”.
Tom, are you saying that everything is necessarily spin? If so, why should anyone believe anything YOU say? Besides, the writer indicated what was found to be true and explained why.
You continue, “Fifty people can view the SAME incident and when asked, you WILL get fifty different observations. So what makes one true and the other untrue?”
Tom, that’s when YOUR work should begin. First, find out WHAT different observations people make, HOW the observations differ and HOW and WHY people reached the conclusions they did. Then you analyze. Normally, that should get you where you want to go: Factville.
“Facts or your belief of facts? Your website states the founder is registered republican, another site states, Independent, so which is it?”
Tom, this site finds that the founder is a registered Republican, and the other (probably) found that his facts are “independent,” meaning “not based on partisanship”. Without reviewing the article you refer to, we have no way of kowing for certain what the case is — but if one source is reputed to have never told a lie (and most lies are can be proven true or false), common sense would dictate that you lean toward the source than has never been proven to lie. This may simply be semantic error, but you can always write to the other site and ask the writer to clarify — or you might be able to get clues from the total context — but to suggest that we are trapped in a world where we cannot know the truth of such issues as this is patently false and only serves the interests of those who wish to sew confusion and divert people away from the truth..
One thing that I find interesting is that Fox states that they have specific news time slots, and that anything outside of those time slots is commentary. O’Reilly is in such a commentary slot, so was Beck. That doesn’t prevent people from finding fault with the accuracy of their news-slot items.
I honestly believe that when it comes to reporting the news, you must, must stay neutral. Walter Cronkite has always been my example on that. As for the commentary people, I believe they can state their opinion but it must be based in fact and not what you want fact to be. Glenn Beck has no standing with me for that simple reason.
Walter Cronkite was a class act. So were the Huntley and Brinkley team. Dan Rather-Don’t get me started. Glenn Beck, Shawn Hannity- They aren’t journalists, just talking heads with there own opinions and agendas. I don’t watch or listen to either of them. Chris Mathews, to me this guy is Glenn Beck except liberal. Same crap, different side of the fence.
Rumbly,
What a great post and cool comment stream! Thank you, you taught me something. These days all sources must be checked and the beauty of the Net is that you have the capability to do that with ease. There is no excuse not to. Since the media outlets are mostly owned by corporations one has to research to ensure that you are not being manipulated by someone else’s politicla agenda. Glenn Beck is pond scum :). Will definitely check out Snopes.
Boy do I miss the likes of Dan Rather…
I hear you on that one. Rather or Ted Koppel will show up as a guest on other shows and end up outclassing everyone. There is something to be said about the journalist who reports the news without being the news.
Dan Rather, oh yea, the journalist that was fired for lying about documents that were proven to be forged.
John, I hear Dan Rather speak on some shows and he is so much better than many of the people who are on these days. Ted Koppel made an appearance on Bill O’Reilly recently and put the man to shame in his steady, calm manner.
I agree that Rather is an excellent speaker, but journalist? He lost his credibility.
“noesfromrumbleycottage”. I find your comments in this string to be very biased. Your defense of snopes is admirable, however your attacks on a news commentator (Glenn Beck) is clearly biased. Everyone should understand who is reporting and also understand whether they are commenting or reporting. Glenn Beck is a commentator who is paid to comment, much like Dionne is, but the polar opposite in political bias. Please state the facts and comment and try not to target commentators. They are not news news journalists.
They may not be news journalists but they need to be responsible in what they report during their commentaries. That is what you have interns for – to do the research and make sure your facts are correct.
Did you read the one piece in which he states that Snopes is paid for by Soros as a way to discredit Snopes but then says his show uses Snopes all of the time to verify news stories. That begs the question of does Glen Beck feel Snopes is reliable or not. If you are going to say that a Soros-funded Snopes has an obvious liberal slant, why are you using that same site as a reliable source of information? If you believe the site have a liberal bias which you are criticising, can you also believe that site is a reliable source of information?
Because of hypocritical stances like that, I will never take Glenn Beck seriously. When even Fox News takes you off of their station, you might be too far off the path of rationality.
I don’t take Beck, Dionne, Mathews, Hannity, O’Rielly and many more seriosly either, becasue I know they are opinion writers (journalists) When I first saw your website, I thought, good, one without bias, but your comments proved otherwise. I wish I could find a website the reports the facts and statistics and does not add commentary. I guess that died years ago, before the internet, so I may have to give up my search. Thanks for your reply though, it surprised me. My first thought when I posted it was that I would not see it today. For that you have my admiration and respect.
Live and Let Live
Thanks for the compliment. I try to answer right away, especially when the comments are relevant. You would not believe the amount of spam I get with badly formed sentences that do not relate at all to the content of the particular blog post.
As to your point: I don’t care who they are, they need to check their facts all of the time. Glenn Beck and his fellow commentators influence a good number of people in this country. They, most of all, should be able to rattle off facts at the drop of a hat and not half-formed theories.
If someone like Glenn Beck thinks that a specific fact checking site is biased and unreliable, why then in their next breathe do they state that they use the site all of the time and find the information to be right.
I guess I demand something more from commentators.
After reading this thread I have to add my two bits. I have found Snopes to be inaccurate at times .In this I have first hand experience. Target locally stopped allowing the Salvation Army to put their ringers in front of their stores. I can not speak for the rest of the country but I know in our state this was true because as a service project to Rotary we were filling in for the ringers. Snopes reported it as false. There have been other times where the truth was more shaded. People need to look at more than one source for information because everyone has a bias. Everyone.
I just checked Snopes and saw that they have now changed Salvation Army bell ringer story at Target to “true”. They must have gotten plenty of commentary from people on this item. Perhaps that is what needs to happen. We need to call them on it when they are wrong.
Absolutely!
My big Qualms with Snopes.com is they majorly get there sources of information from the internet. They do very little if any actually fact checking in real life. As a person who has investigated things extensively on the internet before I know as a lot of you do most of what is on here is far from the truth. In fact many websites are purposeful troll websites or satire based. These sites publish hundreds of articles a month that have no basis in truth.
I have also read several articles from then where they seem to deliberately leave out solid sources of information. For instance in a snopes article about the plane that hit the pentagon they seemed to deliberately leave out evidence directly from the pentagon crash website. A large amount of there data directly conflicted with the official story. Very specific things too such as the angle of decent, the speed of the aircraft the extent of the damage to the building all wrong because they pulled there facts off the internet. Sure they provided sources to the websites that gave them false information but if there sources are false that makes them fallible as well.
In certain cases where the verdict of a particular snopes article is in question, from lack of information, or other reasons. It seems they are more apt to just simply give there opinion then saying we just don’t have enough information to make a judgement call.
Thirdly there standards in judging myths often seem too rigid to actually be of use. I have come across several articles written by them which point out the most obvious things and then proceed to overlook the entire heart of the myth attached to it.
For instance Peta released a video linking ugg’s a form of shoe to a horrible and despicable way of killing sheep for skins. They included footage of this atrocity and tried to link it to the company by sharing the video and telling people the company did this things to sheep. Essentially negative propaganda. Snopes dedicated the article to showing that uggs are indeed made of sheep skin which is a waste of time. Instead they should have directed the article at the core of the myth whether uggs use fur made by mulesing. Or whether they buy fur from people who do.
The more snopes articles I read the more errors, opinions, and bad sources I find.
Daniel, Not sure what you are trying to do here. Do you want us all to look up the Snopes article or Whether Snopes has an article about killing sheep or if Ugg boots are made from sheepskin.
The problem I have is that the article addressed a very specific question – Are Ugg boots made from sheepskin. That was the question that was answered without getting into mulesling. Mulesing was not addressed in the question but nor was the PETA video that you mention. This is an old story, given the reference materials came from at least five years ago.
But consider this, you choose to criticize Snopes for inaccuracies when you yourself employ terrible grammar, a lack of comma usage knowledge, and an inability to present a cohesive argument. First, you say that snopes does only minimal internet searches to get their information, then you states their standards for myth busting is too rigid. Which is it – lack standards or too high of standards?
Why attack ‘Daniel’ regarding his grammar usage, etc.? If you go back into your own comments, you will find where a bit of proofreading could have helped. In addition, your use of ‘begs the question’ is incorrect and within a poorly constructed sentence (ref: “That begs the question of does Glen Beck feel Snopes is reliable or not.” / March 2013) So does that mean I should deride your comments because of some grammatical/proofreading errors and misuse of terminological phrases? Unless a comment is so grammatically impoverished that a reasonable person cannot understand it, attacking some formatting errors in this manner is basically nothing more than ad hominem; that is, unless the point of this blog is about correcting formatting and not about addressing content? Ad hominem is resorted to when people become overly emotional (which can equate to losing rational judgment) and/or do not have sufficiently valid arguments to support their claims. I don’t find in Daniel’s comments that the purported inaccuracies to which he is alluding have anything to do with formatting or grammar. In addition, some posters are not native English language speakers. Some posters have issues such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, poor eyesight, etc. I think you could have made the other points in your reply without resorting to ad hominem. JMHO
Did you honestly read his comment or decide to base your comment on some unknown hurt to yourself? He rambled without making a point. I wanted to know the point of his comments, specifically if Snopes is too loosey goosey with the facts or too rigid in their judging standards. Had you read my entire reply you would have seen that unless you have a bone to pick because you either see yourself in his response or you are a relative offended by my response. Just saying…
notesfromrumbleycottage, this is a very old thread. I found it when I researched the credibility of Snopes.com. Like you I research everything; I learned the importance of thorough research while studying for my library science degree. Like you, I appreciate proper usage of standard English that I learned while studying for my language specialist degree. With that said, from time-to-time I find such outlandish commentary on the internet that I feel compelled to register simply to leave one post. That happened when I read your blog, I don’t pick bones and have never heard of any of the commenters, particularly you. I don’t troll; too busy, but the way I see things is that if one puts a blog in cyber space with a section for comments, one should be prepared for whatever the commenters say. You, instead, attack the posters who wish to engage in logical dialogue and your sources are Snopes and wikipedia? Are you serious? What ever happened to peer reviewed articles from scientific journals? You, Lady are a joke. Several people made very concise, well thought out comments and you denigrated those posts attacking the organization and grammar. What the heck is “lack of comma usage knowledge” of which you accuse Daniel? You have subjects and predicates along with pronouns and antecedents that don’t agree. He has a couple of typos only, but you have major errors. Then when someone defends Daniel, you really “go off” and attack character. It goes on and on. What a POS you are!
You’re right, I guess. It was crass for me to go off on his obvious grammar and punctuation mistakes that make a comment difficult to read. It was wrong for me to point out that Daniel stated they were too lax and too stringent in the same argument. It would probably be incredibly crass for me to add that I hate your one lone paragraph to spew out your disagreement in such a manner that all the words flow together, making it unreadable.
I could also point out that people hate Snopes in an unreasonable manner and do not take the time to seek out exactly what they say about any given presidential candidate. For instance, if Snopes really was a liberal site, all of their stories would pile on the hate about George W. and Mitt. I went looking for all of their posts about these men and found them to be – wait for it – positive and debunking some of the evil myths about these two. So I will ridicule people who’s only opinion of Snopes comes from trailBLAZEing websites posting years old spam about Snopes. And if you ever read that letter and go on to the fact checking site listed, you will find that they defend Snopes.
This is the paragraph in which I apologize and grovel to your obvious greatness. I mean, my only sources are Wikipedia and Snopes. If someone has to say they are not a troll because they are too busy, then perhaps they are trying too hard to throw off the scent. Character attack? probably. Just as you attacked mine. Then again, you should have seen what I initially wrote and deleted out of a sense of propriety.