Ethics Alarms has been tracking the increasing political bias exhibited by Snopes, once the definitive “Urban Legends” web source to identify false stories on the internet, e-mail hoaxes and other pollution of public information. The website has made the disastrous decision to wade into political topics and to hire some new social justice warriors and wanna-be Democratic Party operatives to cover them, resulting in the site becoming a bad imitation of PolitiFact.
The disturbing trend really established itself this month, but it was in evidence earlier. For example, Snopes rushed to defend Hillary Clinton when the story of her defense of a child rapist was used to smear her. (Ethics Alarms explained, correctly, unlike Snopes, what was unethical about the attacks on Clinton—all defendants deserve a zealous defense, no matter what the charge, and a lawyer isn’t endorsing or supporting a client’s crimes by doing her professional duty.) The Snopes defense, in contrast, was dishonest and misleading. Quoth Snopes, via its primary left-biased reporter, Kim LaCapria.
Claim: Hillary Clinton successfully defended an accused child rapist and later laughed about the case.
MOSTLY FALSE
WHAT’S TRUE: In 1975, young lawyer Hillary Rodham was appointed to represent a defendant charged with raping a 12-year-old girl. Clinton reluctantly took on the case, which ended with a plea bargain for the defendant.
WHAT’S FALSE: Hillary Clinton did not volunteer to be the defendant’s lawyer, she did not laugh about the the case’s outcome, she did not assert that the complainant “made up the rape story,” she did not claim she knew the defendant to be guilty, and she did not “free” the defendant.
Notice that the TRUE and FALSE sections don’t match the claim. That’s because Snopes is playing the logical fallacy game of moving the goalposts and using straw men. The claim, as stated by Snopes, is 100% true.
Clinton did successfully defend her client; very successfully, in fact. Getting a beneficial plea bargain that is the best outcome a client can hope for is a successful defense. LaCapria is displaying her ignorance. Acquittal isn’t the only successful defense outcome.
Clinton also laughed about the case. What would you call this? ( from FactCheck.org)
In 2014, the Washington Free Beacon published the audio of an interview that Arkansas reporter Roy Reed conducted with Clinton in the 1980s. In the interview, Clinton recalls some unusual details of the rape case, and she can be heard laughing in three instances, beginning with a joke she makes about the accuracy of polygraphs.
Clinton: Of course he claimed he didn’t. All this stuff. He took a lie detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs. [laughs]
At another point, Clinton said the prosecutor balked at turning over evidence, forcing her to go to the judge to obtain it.
Clinton: So I got an order to see the evidence and the prosecutor didn’t want me to see the evidence. I had to go to Maupin Cummings and convince Maupin that yes indeed I had a right to see the evidence [laughs] before it was presented.
Clinton then said that the evidence she obtained was a pair of the accused’s underwear with a hole in it. Clinton told Reed that investigators had cut out a piece of the underwear and sent the sample to a crime lab to be tested, and the only evidence that remained was the underwear with a hole in it.
Clinton took the remaining evidence to a forensic expert in Brooklyn, New York, and the expert told her that the material on the underwear wasn’t enough to test. “He said, you know, ‘You can’t prove anything,’” Clinton recalled the expert telling her.
Clinton:I wrote all that stuff and I handed it to Mahlon Gibson, and I said, “Well this guy’s ready to come up from New York to prevent this miscarriage of justice.” [laughs]
That is certainly laughing about the case. Then Snopes tries equivocation, saying that Clinton didn’t laugh about the outcome of the case. I see: she laughed (three times!) while talking about the case, but wasn’t laughing about the case’s outcome, just…the case.
Ridiculous.
Similarly ridiculous is Snopes’ claim that Hillary “did not assert that the complainant ‘made up the rape story.'” She pleaded that her client was not guilty, meaning that she argued in court that he didn’t rape the victim. Hillary claimed that her client was not guilty of rape while the victim was saying he raped her. Again from FactCheck.org:
Clinton filed a motion to order the 12-year-old girl to get a psychiatric examination. “I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing … [and] that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body,” according to an affidavit filed by Clinton in support of her motion.
Clinton also cited an expert in child psychology who said that “children in early adolescence tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences and that adolescents with disorganized families, such as the complainant’s, are even more prone to such behavior,” Clinton wrote in her affidavit.
If Snopes is arguing that Hillary didn’t use the precise words ‘made up the rape story,’ that’s deceit. Obviously her defense was that the child said there was rape when there wasn’t one. In the meme Snopes was using in its post, “made up” is reasonable short hand for “falsely claimed that she was raped.”
Contrary to Scopes’ denials, Hillary also made it clear, in her quotes in the interview, that she thought her client was guilty. What else could “I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs” mean?
No, she didn’t volunteer for the case, and saying that she “freed” him is self-evidently sloppy in describing any criminal defense representation. Judges, juries and prosecutors free defendants; no defense lawyer has that power. Did Clinton’s efforts on behalf of the rapist make him a free man long, long before he would have been without Clinton’s efforts? Unquestionably. He was sentenced to just one year in a county jail and four years of probation, according to the final judgment signed by the judge.
Conclusion: Snopes was dishonestly spinning for Hillary, even though what she had done in this case was simply competent lawyering, and entirely honorable.
As I explained here, there was nothing wrong, unethical or hypocritical about Clinton’s work in this case. Her laughter in the interview is a little unsettling, but Hillary’s laughter is often unsettling. She did her job as a defense lawyer, ethically, and well. The accusation that what she did was unethical is ignorant, but Snopes’ deceitful and misleading denial of what she did is just partisan spin.
In June, Snopes decided that the outrageous news story about a school calling the police to grill a fourth grader about something he said at a class party warranted undermining. After all, we can’t have people thinking that our schools abuse students based on hysterical political correctness and race-baiting. Snopes then titled its post, dishonestly: “Police Called Over ‘Racist’ Brownies?”
No news reports claimed that the police were called because of the brownies. None. Police were called because a student made some statement about brownies that another student deemed racist, and the school staff called the police. It’s really easy to debunk a claim that was never made. Does the Snopes story prove that the story is false in any way? No. Why was it written then?
In July, we learned that the trend was no aberration. Snopes apparently felt that the inspiring Facebook post by officer Jay Stalien needed to be discredited, so it had LaCapria write this, which suggested by the inherent innuendo of presenting such a post on a hoax-exposure site that readers should be skeptical. The Stalien post expressed anti-Black Lives Matter sentiments. And Kim couldn’t prove that Stalien exists.
Come to think of it, I can’t prove that Kim exists.
When did Snopes start fact-checking Facebook opinion posts? It started when the site decided to choose sides, that’s when.
Last week, several sources, all so-called “conservative” news media, noted that the American flag was conspicuous by its absence on the set of the Democratic National Convention on its first day. Liberal media went into full-spin mode, scoffing at the criticism. Ethics Alarms concluded that the omission was intentional, at least to some extent:
…the Democratic Party has morphed into an organization that is increasingly dependent on the pleasure and approval of anti-American groups. The supporters of illegal immigration, some of whom advocate returning the Southwest to Mexico; angry black liberation movement activists, who regard the United States as a racist nation and culture; radical internationalists, who believe the United States should not only behave like “other first world nations,” but allow itself to be governed by them; progressives whose view of the United States, nourished by indoctrination in the public schools and colleges dominated by far left faculties, is relentlessly negative; growing numbers of socialists, anti-capitalists, anti-law enforcement activists and fans of soft totalitarianism—-these are increasingly the voting blocs that the professional politicians who run the Democratic Party feel they must pander to and satisfy….These groups that the Democrats feel they have to prostrate themselves before don’t like the Constitution, free speech or the separation of powers; they don’t respect or care about democracy, as the conduct of the Democratic National Committee revealed in the leaked e-mails proved; they don’t honor the sacrifices of veterans in foreign wars; and they view the history of the United States as nothing better than a parade of genocide and discrimination. The United States flag is affirmatively offensive to the Democrats’ core constituencies, so the Democratic Party has apparently decided that so few of its members or supporters have a genuine love of country and respect for its history that the central symbol of both is no longer welcome at its national celebration.
I believe my interpretation is valid. Flag imagery is so central to the history of political conventions that its sudden reduction by 2016 progressives could not have been a mere oversight. Protests registered on Ethics Alarms from commenters arguing that “Democrats don’t care about symbolism” were belied by the recent Democrat-led efforts to purge the Confederate flag from the cultural scene, even to the extent of banning the sales of memorabilia and souvenirs bearing the symbol in Civil War battlefield gift shops, because of what it symbolized.
I also made two observations: “Let’s see how many mainstream media journalists notice the missing flags, or care that they are gone” and “If there is sufficient criticism, watch how the DNC will suddenly make sure the flags re-appear, because forgetting to show the flag in a traditional celebration of American democracy is a mistake anyone could make.”
Observation #1 was borne out by the near total denial of the issue, or rationalization for it, in the mainstream media and from Democrats. My prediction, the second observation, came true by the second day of the convention, when more physical flags suddenly appeared.
Then Snopes, in full spin mode, issued a rebuttal of the no-flag observation, complete with a couple of photographs showing when the flag appeared in digital form, a bunch of flags stuffed away somewhere, and a few individual Democrats in flag-themed garb. I expressed my skepticism about Snopes’ “proof.” It turned out that the rebuttal was worse than I suspected. The site was just busted by The Daily Caller, which checked the photos.
The DC’s findings: the photos offered by Snopes consisted of a screenshot from PBS’ coverage of day one, taken during the pledge of allegiance at the very beginning of the convention, before the physical flags were removed, and a screenshot of C-SPAN’s day two coverage. Snopes falsely claimed that photo was from day one of the convention. Mallory Weggemann, the paralympic swimmer who gave Tuesday’s pledge of allegiance, is seen to the left of the C-Span logo, sitting in her wheelchair as the flag-bearers walk past her…
The verdict: Snopes lied. It deliberately presented a Day 2 photo as being taken on Day 1, because it was desperate to disprove the claims by “right wing sites” that the Democrats were minimizing the presence of the American flag.
That’s the end for Snopes. Even one example of bias-fed misrepresentation ends any justifiable trust readers can have that the site is fair, objective and trustworthy. Snopes has proven that it has a political and partisan agenda, and that it is willing to mislead and deceive its readers to advance it.
Can it recover? Maybe, but not without…
…Getting out of the political fact-checking business.
…Firing Dan Evon, who used the misleading flag photos, as well as Kim LaCapria.
…Confessing its betrayal of trust and capitulation to partisan bias, apologizing, and taking remedial measures.
With all the misinformation on the web, a trustworthy web site like Snopes used to be is essential. Unfortunately, a site that is the purveyor of falsity cannot also be the antidote for it.
I’ll miss Snopes, but until it acknowledges its ethics breach and convinces me that the site’s days of spinning and lying were a short-lived aberration, I won’t be using it again.
UPDATE (10/12/16): Popehat’s estimable Ken White has finally written about the Clinton rape defense, no doubt because the victim in the case has been recruited by the Trump campaign, and makes most of the same points I have, earlier and above. The representations of Clinton’s critics are largely accurate, but their assertion that Clinton’s conduct was wrongful is largely mistaken, based on a mistaken view of the legal profession. Snopes, intent on running interference for Hillary, spins to deny the facts of her representation rather than explaining that she was just doing her job, and well at that. Ken does make an important legal ethics point that I never flagged that was Hillary’s one major breach in the case. In her radio interview, she breached her duty of confidentiality by suggesting that she thought her client was guilty. Ken writes:
Clinton just suggested that she believed her client did what he was accused of, and a fair inference is that her belief may be premised in part on her confidential communications with him. That’s a violation of her ethical obligations of loyalty and confidentiality, and it’s not goddamn funny. It’s completely inappropriate. It’s easing her ethical duty to the former client in order to get a laugh line in an interview. The fact that it’s common for attorneys to put their egos ahead of their obligations to the client doesn’t make it right.
Snopes, meanwhile, is apparently still spinning for Clinton, or so I’m told. I’m never going back there, and I have to rely on the accounts of others.
Ethics Alarms 
Not only did you get called out for lying, you banned the person that called you out after calling him an idiot. Yeah this is a fake site too bad you’re too small minded to recognize it.
Before I ban YOU, let me point out 1)I do not lie 2) commenters who post non substantive comments, like yours, and question my integrity get banned (those are the rules) and 3) those who make idiotic arguments risk being assigned the label of “idiot.” That commenter questioned my reference to a faked photo that Snopes took down, because they were caught, and never addressed the main issue in the post, which was Snopes’ spinning the Hillary Clinton rapist story.
The fact is that Snopes is biased, and spins to fit its partisan agenda. I have no partisan agenda. I have an ethical agneda: I object to partisan fact-check sites cheating.
NOW you’re banned. You don’t get to keep the privilege of participating here by posting insults to the host.
Bye!
i like a lot of what your saying, sir, and goddamn, do we need a intelligent centerist position in the world right now ….but your message is seriously undermined by certain aggressive aspects of your style. YOU’RE BANNED! makes you look like a trump wanna-be ( I know you will probably be offended, and will ban me- but take a good look at yourself. If you take the high road, you will only make yourself more respectable as an ethicist.) Otherwise, it seems like your just some guy who says people that disagree with you are inferior. Sound argument is your asset. Please lay off the Republican juice, and stay sane and in the center. Thats what your readers want.
I’m not offended. But this is an effort to have a discussion and keep it about ethics. There are commenting rules, and they are one click away.I am, essentially, running a an open seminar, and anyone who is serious and thoughtful and not pursuing an agenda is welcome. Those who are disruptive, uncivil, hyper-partisan, disrespectful to the class leader, who is me, waste my time and undermine the mission. Some readers are also too stupid or incapable of critical thought to stay.
If you have a comfy way to say “You are banned,” please share. EA gets about 4000 unique visitors a day, and 6000 page views, rising still. Not bad for an ethics blog. I have banned about 40 commenters in 8 years. It is why the discussion here is of a persistent high level.
Oh?
Is it because they call you out on your bs:
“Clinton also laughed about the case. What would you call this? ( from FactCheck.org)”
What snopes said: “The audio on these tapes is difficult to understand, but Clinton can be heard describing the case as “terrible.” She did audibly laugh or chuckle at points, not about “knowing that the defendant was guilty” or “getting a guilty guy off” (which makes little sense, given that the defendant pled guilty) but rather while musing about how elements of the case that might ordinarily have supported the prosecution worked in the defendant’s favor (i.e., observing that the defendant’s passing a polygraph test had “forever destroyed her faith” in that technology):”
“Clinton did successfully defend her client; very successfully, in fact. Getting a beneficial plea bargain that is the best outcome a client can hope for is a successful defense. LaCapria is displaying her ignorance. Acquittal isn’t the only successful defense outcome.”
They said he was freed not acquitted. https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2016/05/clinton-rape-meme.jpg?resize=1200,630&quality=65
They point that out:
“Finally, Hillary didn’t “free” the defendant in the case. Instead, the prosecuting attorney agreed to a plea deal involving a lesser charge that carried a five-year sentence, of which the judge suspended four years and allowed two months credit of time already served towards the remaining year:”
Why lie about the exact nature of the claim?
“Notice that the TRUE and FALSE sections don’t match the claim. That’s because Snopes is playing the logical fallacy game of moving the goalposts and using straw men. The claim, as stated by Snopes, is 100% true.”
You are the one moving the goalposts!
No, I’m not. My post is clear and accurate, and you missed the point entirely.
1. She did “laugh about the case.” Which part of the case she laughed about is irrelevant to that claim.
2.The True and False statements don’t match the claim, and the claim, as stated by Snopes, IS 100% true, not “mostly false.”
3. Just coming here and saying up is down and white is black is not an argument. And being rude in an attempted first comments is a formula for getting banned, which you are, asshole
I can’t believe that this conversation is even taking place…Snopes has always been a fraud and was found to be so several years ago when they were found to be two people with laptops surfing the same internet everyone else is and merely adding their own “OPINIONS” TO THE QUESTIONS EVERYONE IS ASKING…they were found to be correct less than 35% of the time making them not as good as your average high school student when they research their finals…
What is it you don’t believe? The news media has falsely promoted a fake and partisan fact-checker they can rely on to bolster their own biased and partisan fact-checking, and biased and partisan commenters here, like the good little agents of propaganda they are, come on this site to try to rescue an ally who has been busted by an objective analyst. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
I don’t see how your first claim is valid. The headline of the article says she “freed” the rapist, which you agree is a misrepresentation. The first thing the article says in large type is “Hillary Clinton’s role in a 40-year-old rape case became the focal point of a viral meme in 2016, but the claims made about it were mostly inaccurate.” And then it gives a picture of the meme with inaccuracies they disprove below. Then there is the sentence you are disputing which just vaguely and perhaps inaccurately summarizes the issue under “Claim”. Then immediately below that they again give specifics of the claim under “What’s True” and “What’s False.” So essentially you are claiming a single sentence gives too vague a summary of the issue when both immediately before and immediately after that sentence the issue is explained in detail. The only way anyone could be deceived by this is if they ignored the headline, ignored the first sentence in large type, ignored the large picture, just read the sentence saying “Claim” and “Mostly False”, and then ignored the rest of the article. At worst, this is some editorial sloppiness on Snopes part to not put a more specific description under “Claim”, and it’s a bit of a stretch to even call it that.
I find this discourse, and the possible presence of a fact-based, ethical centrist opinion interesting. So, for due diligence, may I ask your political persuasion, party, and who you voted for this last election cycle?
Since I’ve never seen valid proof, of any human possessing a 100% unbiased opinion, I have come to the conclusion that all people have biases, cultural, political, racial, class, economic or others, and that no statement of ethics, or position on them, however pure, or purely philosophical, is without some form of human bias, which is a natural part of the human mental makeup, and a vital part of our survival neurology.
What I am posing here is a simple question: How do you qualify your being a fit representative for ethics and lack of ethics?
Thank you.
MB
1. None of your business. I did not vote for any of the candidates offered by the two major parties or the two most prominent “Third” parties. I do not consider myself a member of any party.
2. “I have come to the conclusion that all people have biases, cultural, political, racial, class, economic or others, and that no statement of ethics, or position on them, however pure, or purely philosophical, is without some form of human bias, which is a natural part of the human mental makeup, and a vital part of our survival neurology.”
3. The challenge is to acknowledge them, understand them, banish as many of them as possible, and attempt to make sure that they do not affect judgment, fairness, objectivity or one’s functioning ethics alarms.
4. I qualify because I vigorously pursue #3, and ruthlessly assess my own success. That, and the fact that I was lucky enough to be raised with core values, have studied the topic and continue to, and am smart as fuck.
You are welcome.
1: I did not address you in a hostile manner nor did I insinuate a hostile manner or tone with you. You will, like all people have bias towards your own party, or beliefs. I was asking what they were, which given your claims of ethical purity, was a totally fair and relevant question to ask. Also, of course, fair for you to refuse to answer. Any legal position in politics is subject to scrutiny for conflicts of interest.
So is your opinion.
2: You may be “Smart as Fu**”, however You might consider vigorously pursuing manners and communications skills, that better compliment your claimed intelligence, and ruthlessly assessing your own linguistic style, to insure a better transmission of information in conversations.
I think I get where you are coming from, however you may be more effective sans the rancor and needlessly profane language, as well as the retreat into ego as a qualifier, and defensive posture.
Not to say that any of this disqualifies you as a standard bearer of ethics, however, nothing you have said really qualifies you to be one either, and that includes your response.
Good day.
1. Oh, balderdash. You insinuated partisan bias, and that is hostility in these parts.
2. I said that I have no party affiliation, and you still talk about “my party.” Proving my point.
3. I’m a lawyer, an ethicist, and I know more about conflicts of interest than you’re forgotten. when I have one, I state it. As you would knwo if you read the blog.
4. I make a good living with my communications skills, thanks. When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it.
5. “I think I get where you are coming from, however you may be more effective sans the rancor and needlessly profane language, as well as the retreat into ego as a qualifier, and defensive posture.”
Bite me. There is very little profanity here, and what I use, I do for intended effect. My bog, my style, my choice. Read, or don’t read. And the word is “fuck.”
6. Not defensive at all, since there is nothing to defend. I just resent pompous asses rendering uninformed judgments here and accusing me of bias, and say so.
7.”Good Day”—the trademark exit of the pompous! Perfect. Love it.
Mr. Brill is banned. I thought that was clear from my last response, but apparently not.
As enjoyable as it is to have a commenter whom I picture dressed like a Charles Dickens character, he doesn’t understand ethics, me or the blog, and is obnoxious in his ignorance. Some highlights from his last screed, now residing in the spam bin…
You appear to be spinning out of control, so I’ll do you the favor (and it is a favor, to be sure) of noting your “responses” for the record.
I am fairly brash and blunt, and I never insinuate anything.
I was being sincere, however, since you insist on displaying what I can only call cocaine addict behavior, allow me to speak frankly.
Well, that’s a new insult for this blog! If MB had read the comment policies, he would know that this kind of statement is regarded as the equivalent of being invited into my house and crapping on the floor.
You are obviously an overly-sensitive egomaniac,..Your delusions and paranoia do not equal reality for anyone except yourself.
What makes any commenter think they have leave to talk to me like that here? Amazing. This guy doesn’t add anything to the topic at hand, instead presuming to demand my credentials. This is a seminar. I am the facilitator. Nobody makes you participate, but interrupting the discussion to ask the facilitator to explicate his orientation is inappropriate, especially since the answers are available on the site.
There is no effective communication without clear and concise language, and you would “knwo” that if you took the time to respond to what I asked, (or learn how to type/use spellcheck) rather than what you hallucinated I wrote.
Signature significance for a jerk: resorting to mockery about typos in a comment exchange. Wow. .
“Bite me”? Really? I expect something a little more advanced than 80’s dorm room dopehead banter in a “conversation” with an “ethics expert”
I knew “bite me” would gripe this silly man’s cookies. I save that bit of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” nostalgia just for pompous boobs like this one. My blog, my sense of humor. Deal with it.
You seem to assume that somehow cursing, makes you more “authentic”, and more “regular guy off the street”, and I can guarantee you, you’d last less than 5 minutes “round these parts” using that language with adults in public. It’s not “authentic”, It’s just sloppy.
Thank you for your unsolicited assessment. I’m a successful professional public speaker and writer, have my own style, occasionally use a vulgar term or profanity for emphasis, and like many, many other writers who do likewise, know exactly what I’m doing.
If I projected the stuffy arrogance this tool does, I’d throw myself into a woodchipper.
I think, despite your glowing self-appraisal, that your ethics are sorely lacking, and in need of review.
Did I say bite me? I think I did. Let me say it again. Bite me.
“Ethics” indeed.
Grade:
Communication: F
Goodwill towards an honest question: F
Comprehensible ideas and spelling: F
Name calling, and bizarre behavior: A+
Good day.
One “Good Day” gets you banned, Bozo. This makes two But thanks for the laugh.
Beautiful Reply. Thanks for laying it out clearly, showing folks how to have boundaries and laying out the rules of fair play. The personal attacks are a favorite tactic currently and it often works. No sense in wasting your time with folks who don’t want to have a respectful discussion based on logic.
http://www.snopes.com/trump-insult-minorities-disabilities-twitter/
Point? Nobody is arguing that Snopes always cheats or lies. If it did that, Kim Lapaglia would never be able to spin for her favorite party.
Who runs this site.; what are your political persuasions I.,e., party affiliation?Did you vote for Hillary? Did you vote for Trump? How can we know your ethics site is truthful and ethical? Please advise.
Martha Mahon
38 Alan Drive
Weatogue, CT 06089
1. Read the home page.
2. Read the posts. Search for Hillary and Trump. and 2016 election.
3. Read about me, then read the posts.
Why the address?
I have to admit that I’m slow at finding news and opinions online because I’m mostly too busy trying to make a living in the form of work!. But I just stumbled upon your blog. And this article was wonderful…(not to butter you up) and of course your response to a few of those commentors was historic and hysterical ..You totally exposed them Please keep it going. Again Thks.
Best,
Mike James
Please, butter me up. I get beat up much more than buttered up.
I do agree with most of what you’re saying, but the ‘laughing about the case’ is splitting hairs a little bit. Someone can laugh awkwardly or nervously while talking about something without actively intending to laugh about it – people do it all the time and it is ‘t weird or wrong. That either you or Snopes have given any time to that part of the claim is a bit confusing to me, but whatever, life goes on.
I personally think that Snopes is still a useful tool, but realistically no one of us should ever use one source as our only fact-checker. The whole point of using Snopes, or FactCheck, or Politico or whoever is that we are CHECKING FACTS. If we want to check facts for ourselves the onus is definitely still on us to ensure what we’re reading is correct; relying on one site to check your facts for you is moronic at best. I like to use sites in conjunction with each other to see what they have a consensus on, then fact check for myself whatever inconsistencies I find. That way you get the best of both world’s – you get a relatively easy time finding out what happened, and you get to have some confidence that what you’re saying is true.
“And as I’ve mentioned, we’ve all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry. The unawareness remains strong but compliance is obviously fading rapidly.” Bill Ivey to John Podesta, WikiLeaks
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3599
Somehow snopes debunked this fact. That e-mail happened; it’s real. Despite its undisputed reality snopes “debunked” it and people now cite snopes when WikiLeaks is used as evidence that the DNC has conspired to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry.
I’m still in awe that anyone, Democrat or Republican, voted for Hillary
Only a man who doesn’t read or look at the evidence talks like this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-compliant-citizenry/
You just cherry picked the whole email, which Snopes looks at: A more objective reading suggests that Ivey was actually stating the opposite, however — that a lack of awareness and a tendency toward compliance on the part of the citizenry in recent years was the result of the conflation of entertainment and the electoral process (as exemplified by the rise of Donald Trump), and these phenomena present a problem for democracy which must be countered.
Yes, Snopes is basically right, but then it’s defending its “team.” The email is also stunning stupid and naive, demonstrating yet again that progressives, Clinton, and Democrats never comprehended why they lost to Trump.
Bias makes you stupid.
Even though the fact checkers need fact checking, it happens on a once-in-a-blue-moon basis.
I actually wrote to the author of this article ages ago and used her linked sources to contradict her claims. I’m glad someone else noticed. It should be noted that the same author has done similar “record correcting” on other unflattering stories about former Secretary Clinton. It seems to be her hobby. Thank you for your work.
…doesn’t “mostly false” in this case just mean “technically true, but highly misleading”?
Yeah the statements are true but what’s actually being meant by them and what most people would typically infer from them are false.
Your attempt to debunk Snopes is so wrong-headed, misguided, and riddled with factual errors, that you prove yourself to be an idiot unworthy of writing about _ethics_, of which, commitment to truth is paramount. In the points I make below, we can generalize an important fact that you completely elide: Snopes is not a “fact checking” organization in the traditional sense of the word. That is, they do not check on facts reported by fellow or other journalists and news organizations, and they do not (in general) check on facts as spoken by politicians and pundits. Rather, they report on the veracity of claims made in Memes and other internet-based media and propaganda. In every case in your article, when you “debunk” Snopes, you are yourself debunking a straw-man. In every case, Snopes is debunking a meme or other internet-based rumor, while you take them to task for debunking a *news claim*.
Let’s get into specifics:
1. The HRC-defends-rapist post. The Snopes post is responding to Fox or Limbaugh or anything like that, but to the Meme *posted* in the article you cite. The Meme claims:
1.1. HRC *volunteered* to be the lawyer.
1.2. HRC “in court” “told the judge” that the victim “made up the rape story” because she “enjoyed fantasizing about older men”
1.3. HRC got the “rapist freed”. (Not “freed the rapist”)
1.4. HRC admitted in a 1980 interview she “admitted she knew he was guilty”.
1.5. HRC laughed about “it” (the rapist being guilty? knowing about it?)
You and Snopes both agree that claims 1,3, and 4 are completely false.
Regarding (5), you say HRC “laughed about the case”, but that wasn’t the claim in the Meme — it was over “knowing he was guilty”. From the context, it was clear that her laughter was over no longer trusting polygraphs because of the case, which to be fair *could* mean that she reveals she knows he was guilty, but in fact, just means she didn’t believe he was honest about not being guilty. Her laughter can be taken to mean many things, but not that she was laughing about knowing he was guilty. The Meme is misleading at best, and your case against Snopes is a strawman.
Snopes denies that point (2) is true, and this here is your strongest case, but your refutation is incorrect: According to the information you provided, HRC’s assertion that the victim “made up the story” was claimed in a court filing for evidence, not as the defense per se. The Meme is in this sense not inaccurate, as her filing is “telling the judge in court”. However, it’s false to say the HRC claimed the victim “made up the story”, as she is *reporting* that she had been *informed* the child had fantasized. So Snopes is right to deny this claim, but here they could have mentioned it was partially true.
(2) Brownies. You claim that “No news reports claimed that the police were called because of the brownies”. Um, http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20160629_Why_police_were_called_to_a_South_Jersey_third_grade_class_party.html. Case closed. “A third grader had made a comment about the brownies being served to the class. After another student exclaimed that the remark was “racist,” the school called the Collingswood Police Department, according to the mother of the boy who made the comment.”. Snopes 2, Marshall: 0.
(3) Flag banning. Again, you misrepresent the claims Snopes is debunking. They were addressing several claims and Memes, one of which is posted along in the article, which state something to the effect “The DNC announced that the American flag may not be worn or waved at the convention since it is offensive to so many Democrats”. The key concept is “American flag is *banned* at DNC”. Their evidence *did not need to be limited to Day 1* of the DNC, so showing evidence from Day 2 is entirely legitimate.
Further, you take your own authority of Truth and declare that Snopes *lied*. Now that is a strong claim! You claim that not only was Snopes wrong, but that (1) they knew they were wrong, and (2) intended to mislead! These are things you cannot know or certainly have not provided evidence for. As such, the claim that Snopes lied *is entirely unethical*.
This is the kind of “rebuttal” that one often sees in spin-fests. It’s not worth my time, but here are a couple of samples that prove it’s an intellectually dishonest screed: 1. The ridiculous–it has been a favorite of the Snopes defenders here—argument that laughing about the fact that the polygraph mis-read her guilty client isn’t “laughing about the case.” If she was laughing about a feature of the case, and her cient’s guilt is obviously a feature of the case. That you would stoop this low is signature significance of a hack. 2. The even more absurd distinction you try to draw between pleadings and oral arguments in court. I’m a lawyer, and a specialist in legal ethics. Both are communications to the court, bother are required to be accurate and honest, and there is no practical distinction at all: they both “tell the court.”
Snopes’ partisan bias is obvious and well-documented. I don’t know what your problem is.
PS. Regarding the brownies story, I have no idea what you’re blathering about. My post about it is here: I wrote that the police were called.
Oh…I have to mention the brownies, on which your furious spinning and word parsing is particularly egregious. Again: nobody called the police because of the brownies. They called the police because of what a student said about the brownies. Snopes debunked what didn’t happen, and what no news story, including the one you cited, claimed happened. The police were called because of what a child SAID, not “because of the brownies.” If someone calls the police because I say “I’m going to shoot the President,” they are not calling the police “because of the President.”
I think I do know what your problem is: you’re an idiot. You should work for Snopes. Maybe you do.
otheus wrote, “Your attempt to debunk Snopes is so wrong-headed, misguided, and riddled with factual errors, that you prove yourself to be an idiot unworthy of writing about _ethics_, of which, commitment to truth is paramount. “
This alone should get a troll shilling for Snopes banned but thankfully I’m not the one making such decisions around here, Jack is much more tolerant than I’ll ever be.
otheus wrote, “In the points I make below, we can generalize an important fact that you completely elide: Snopes is not a “fact checking” organization in the traditional sense of the word. That is, they do not check on facts reported by fellow or other journalists and news organizations, and they do not (in general) check on facts as spoken by politicians and pundits. Rather, they report on the veracity of claims made in Memes and other internet-based media and propaganda. In every case in your article, when you “debunk” Snopes, you are yourself debunking a straw-man. In every case, Snopes is debunking a meme or other internet-based rumor, while you take them to task for debunking a *news claim*.”
Don’t you know it’s foolish to try and sound intelligent by arguing out of both sides of your mouth?
Additionally; just because you don’t think Snopes it’s a fact checker in a “traditional sense of the word” doesn’t mean shit when people are actually referencing Snopes as a fact checker.
Overall I found your comment to be a whole lot of Salem Witch Trial School of Thought.
Amazing that this still goes on. An interesting read, as this gives a glimpse into the mindset of progressives.
Progressives are trapped in a never ending loop of maybe this time it’ll work unethical attacks. Their nonsense eventually loops back around to repeat the same old bull shit that was slapped down before, they just hope everyone has forgotten about the fact that it’s the same old bull shit.
Is it possible that you have had any single thread that has produced more commenters that earned being banned than this one? The snoops shills are still oozing out of the woodwork with their idiotic comments.
I think it’s signature significance of the intelligence level of the people that think snopes is worthy of referencing.
The anti-pit bull website post is close. Also one of the “lawscam” posts.
She seems to be a psychopath. She laughs inappropriately a lot. Laughing about Kadaffi dying, “We came, we saw, he died.” Whatever you feel about the man, no one deserves to be sodomized to death with a knife. That’s not something a person with a moral compass would laugh about.
“That is certainly laughing about the case. Then Snopes tries equivocation, saying that Clinton didn’t laugh about the outcome of the case. I see: she laughed (three times!) while talking about the case, but wasn’t laughing about the case’s outcome, just…the case.
Ridiculous.”
Isnt that what the initial claim imples, that she laughed about the outcome?
OK, that’s your limit: you’re a Snopes-enabling troll; I get it. Maybe you work for them.
You’re banned. Go away.