If you plan on monitoring your website for ‘fake news’, it’s best not to use discredited, bogus, unreliable, biased liberal “fact checkers” like Snopes and Politifact as your source.
From Fox News.
To protect Americans against “fake” news, Facebook will now use filters so that only “reputable” articles can appear at the top of users’ trending news stories. And Facebook is going to media fact checkers for help (initially ABC News, The Associated Press, FactCheck.org, Politifact and Snopes). But guess what? These fact checkers have their own biases — usually the same liberal biases that we see in the rest of the mainstream media.
Before the 1990s, the mainstream media had a monopoly on the news. Then came the rise of talk radio, Fox News, and the internet. This was a wonderful thing for freedom of information.
Facebook has already faced a scandal for having “filtered out stories on conservative topics from conservative sites.”
But to get an idea of how bias also affects fact checkers, just consider a few evaluations from Politifact.
— “We’re the highest taxed nation in the world. Our businesses pay more taxes than any businesses in the world. That’s why companies are leaving.” Donald Trump on “Meet the Press” on May 8, 2016
Donald Trump was clearly talking about tax rates for businesses. But in rating the claim as “False,” Politifact focuses on total federal tax burden as a share of GDP. Trump was correct that the U.S. has the world’s highest corporate income tax rate (combined federal and state). In 2016, that rate was 38.9 percent France came in second with 34.4 percent. But Politifact conveniently overlooks state taxes, which are really what put the U.S. over the top compared to so many other countries.
— On November 9, California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom claimed that his state’s gun control laws were responsible for a “56 percent decline in the gun murder rate” since the 1990s. Politifact rated this statement as only “mostly true,” but only because the drop in murders was even greater than 56 percent between 1993 and 2014.
Bizarrely, Politifact didn’t question the claim that this drop was due to California’s gun control laws. Pete Wilson, who was the Republican governor from 1991 to 1999, did very little on gun control.
Probably the only significant new regulation was the 1994 California Gun Free School Zone law, but this didn’t even forbid permit holders from carrying on school property.
The major gun regulations only started after Democrat Gray Davis took office in 1999. During the first five years of the period Politifact studied when there was little change in gun laws, gun murders fell by 54 percent, over 80 percent the total 67 percent drop between 1993 and 2014.
Politifact ignores all of the other major crime legislation that was enacted by the Republican governor. For instance, California passed the 1994 Three Strikes law, which doubled the penalty for a second felony if the first one was serious or violent. A third felony carried a prison sentence of 25 years to life. Much research showed that significantly higher criminal penalties likely played a role in reducing crime rates.
— “Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day.” Donald Trump on Monday, October 17th, 2016 in a tweet
Politifact didn’t just say that this claim was false, they deemed it worth the designation: Liar, Liar “Pants on Fire.” While the term “large scale” fraud might be in the eye of the beholder, voter fraud in 2008 gave Al Franken the Senatorship in Minnesota and even control of entire state legislatures have been determined (e.g., the Pennsylvania state Senate in 1994). From California to Pennsylvania to Virginia to Indiana, many thousands of illegal aliens, dead people, and just non-existent ones were caught being registered to vote just a month or so before November election.
A 2014 study published in the journal Electoral Studies used survey data to estimate that 6.4 percent of the nation’s non-citizens voted in 2008 — that would be over a million votes. Another 2012 study from the Pew Center on the States estimated that one out of every eight voter registrations is inaccurate, out-of-date or duplicate, 2.8 million people are registered in more than one state, and 1.8 million registered voters are dead.
In an undercover video, a New York City Board of Elections member was recently caught complaining about the amount of voter fraud created by New York City mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to give out ID cards without checking recipients’ identities.
A similar problem exists in other states, such as California, where illegal aliens are given driver’s licenses and nothing to verify citizenship during voter registration.
To say that vote fraud isn’t common is itself a pretty absurd claim.
Zuckerberg’s staff plans on using Snopes as well. Turns out, their main political fact checker, Kim Lacapria, is known for publishing fake quotes and blatant hoaxes .
She described herself as “openly left-leaning” and a liberal. She trashed the Tea Party as “teahadists.” She called Bill Clinton “one of our greatest” presidents. She claimed that conservatives only criticized Lena Dunham’s comparison of voting to sex because they “fear female agency.”
She once wrote: “Like many GOP ideas about the poor, the panic about using food stamps for alcohol, pornography or guns seems to have been cut from whole cloth–or more likely, the ideas many have about the fantasy of poverty.” (A simple fact-check would show that food stamp fraud does occur and costs taxpayers tens of millions.)
Lacapria even accused the Bush administration of being “at least guilty of criminal negligience” in the September 11 attacks. (The future “fact-checker” offered no evidence to support her accusation.)
Yeah, she’ll be a real asset at ferreting out “fake news”.
……over the past couple of years people started asking questions when ‘Snopes’ was proven wrong in a number of their conclusions. There were also criticisms the Mikkelsons were not really investigating and getting to the ‘true’ bottom of various issues, but rather asserting their beliefs in controversial issues.
In 2008, State Farm agent Bud Gregg hoisted a political sign in Mandeville, Louisiana referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across the internet. The Mikkelson’s were quick to “research” this issue and post their condemnation of it on Snopes.com. In their statement they claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Mr. Gregg into taking down the sign. In fact, nothing of the sort ever took place. A friend of Mr. Gregg personally contacted David Mikkelson to alert him of the factual inacuracy, leaving him Mr. Gregg’s contact phone numbers. Mr. Mikkelson was told that Mr. Gregg would give him the phone numbers to the big exec’s at State Farm in Illinois who would inform them that they had never pressured Mr. Gregg to take down his sign.
But the Mikkelson’s never called Mr. Gregg. In fact, Mr. Gregg found out that no one from Snopes.com had ever contacted any one with State Farm. Yet, Snopes.com has kept their false story of Mr. Gregg up to this day, as the “final factual word” on the issue.
What is behind Snopes’ selfish motivation? A simple review of their “fact-checking” reveals a strong tendency to explain away criticisms towards liberal politicians and public figures while giving conservatives the hatchet job. Religious stories and issues are similarly shown no mercy. With the “main-stream” media quickly losing all credibility with their fawning treatment of Obama, Snopes is being singled out, along with MSNBC and others, as being particularly biased and agenda-modivated.
Another hack at Snopes is Arturo Garcia, who also writes for Raw Story and works as the Editor-at-Large of “Racialicious”– “A blog about the intersection of race and culture” — labels himself a “progressive” in his Twitter bio and frequently engages in left-wing commentary while also determining what’s true or false at the “neutral” Snopes.
Facebook’s staff is manipulative, unethical, dishonest, and leftwing. (Who didn’t know this?) Its reputation for censoring viewpoints it doesn’t like, is well documented.
Conservative sites have been suspended over Zuckerberg’s political preferences, but leftie blogs and muzzie pro-terrorist Facebook pages are relatively unscathed.
Lauren Southern, a conservative commentator, was just banned from Facebook for 30 days because she posted a comment that criticized the left-leaning hierarchy’s habit of censoring opposing viewpoints. The irony is lost on The Zuck.
Mark Zuckerberg is such a big fan of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ thugs, he forced curators to insert propaganda about the group into ‘trending’ news feeds.
He also kowtows to radical muzzies and their violent objections to caricatures of mohammad.
If you’re going to have a site that supports your opinions, fine. Just don’t claim to be ‘neutral’ and don’t bother with the façade of “fact checkers”.
Related articles:
https://americadaily.com/facebook-fact-checker-is-staffed-by-democrat-donors-ex-cnn-employees/
http://pamelageller.com/2016/12/facebook-using-left-wing-propagandists-fact-check-fake-news.html/