Fact-checking the fact-checkers: Snopes.com gets an ‘A’
by Paul McNamara
NetworkWorld.com
April 13, 2009
What’s your first thought when someone spreads an e-mail around the office claiming that Oprah is giving away a million bucks or that your penny-pinching state will no longer send out reminders about driver’s license renewals?
Right: Better check Snopes.com to see if these things are true. (The first is not; the second is indeed, if you, like me, live in Massachusetts.)
Established in 1995, Snopes has long been the go-to site for running a rumor through the BS-detector, and its proprietors, David and Barbara Mikkelson, have assumed an almost mythic stature as the most authoritative discoverers of truth and falsity online.
But who’s checking the fact checkers?
Last Friday it was a similar but more narrowly focused outfit, FactCheck.org, which is funded by the Annenberg Foundation and describes itself as “a nonpartisan, nonprofit ‘consumer advocate’ for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.” (Why not try something easier first, like say peace in the Middle East?)
Here’s the essence of a chain e-mail that FactCheck.org decided to fact check: Is Snopes.com run by a “very Democratic” duo who long hid their true identities, rarely do any real research, and blatantly fabricated a tale about a State Farm Insurance agent just because he publicly opposed the election of President Obama? Continue reading “Snopes.com Gets an ‘A’”