Snopes has been caught lying again, proving that it has a political and partisan agenda and that it is willing to mislead and deceive its readers in order to advance the cause of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment.
Earlier this yearĀ Correct the Record, a pro-Clinton Super PAC, admitted they are spending millions of dollars to employ an army of trolls to ācorrectā and āpush backā against internet usersĀ who criticize Clinton.
Correct The Recordās āBarrier Breakersā project admitted in a press release that it pays people to pretend to be Clinton supporters, and claims that thousands of unsuspecting social media users have already been āaddressedā by the PACās mercenary social media warriors ā with the promise that many more will be ācorrectedā in the near future.
Given that Snopes entered the political fact checking game around the same time, and has rapidly developed an appetite for politcal fact checking ā most of which displays a clear Clinton bias ā it is legitimate to ask if Snopes are also on theCorrect The Record payroll.
Ethics Alarms reports:
Ethics Alarms has been tracking the increasing political bias exhibited by Snopes, once the definitive āUrban Legendsā 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 Clintonāall defendants deserve a zealous defense, no matter what the charge, and a lawyer isnāt endorsing or supporting a clientās 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:
Notice that the TRUE and FALSE sections donāt match the claim. Thatās 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 isnāt 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 didnāt. 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. Ā [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 didnāt 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 accusedās 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 wasnāt enough to test. āHe said, you know, āYou canāt prove anything,āā Clinton recalled the expert telling her.
Clinton:I wrote all that stuff and I handed it to Mahlon Gibson, and I said, āWell this guyās ready to come up from New York to prevent this miscarriage of justice.ā [laughs]
That is certainly laughing about the case. Then Snopes tries equivocation, saying that Clinton didnāt laugh about theoutcome of the case. I see: she laughed (three times!) while talking about the case, but wasnāt laughing about the caseāsoutcome, justā¦the case.
Ridiculous.
Similarly ridiculous is Snopesā claim that Hillary ādid not assert that the complainant āmade up the rape story.āā She pleaded that her client was not guilty, meaning that she argued in court that he didnāt 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. āI have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing ā¦ [and] that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body,ā according to an affidavit filed by Clinton in support of her motion.
Clinton also cited an expert in child psychology who said that āchildren in early adolescence tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences and that adolescents with disorganized families, such as the complainantās, are even more prone to such behavior,ā Clinton wrote in her affidavit.
If Snopes is arguing that Hillary didnāt use the precise words āmade up the rape story,ā thatās deceit. Obviously her defense was that the child said there was rape when there wasnāt one. In the meme Snopes was using in its post, āmade upā is reasonable short hand for āfalsely claimed that she was raped.ā
Contrary to Scopesā denials, Hillary also made it clear, in her quotes in the interview, that she thought her client was guilty. What else could āI had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphsā mean?
No, she didnāt volunteer for the case, and saying that she āfreedā him is self-evidently sloppy in describing any criminal defense representation. Judges, juries and prosecutors free defendants; no defense lawyer has that power. Did Clintonās efforts on behalf of the rapist make him a free man long, long before he would have been without Clintonās 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 Clintonās work in this case. Her laughter in the interview is a little unsettling, but Hillaryās 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 Snopesā 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 graderabout something he said at a class party warranted undermining. After all, we canāt have people thinking that our schools abuse students based on hysterical political correctness and race-baiting. Snopes then titled its post, dishonestly: āPolice Called Over āRacistā Brownies?ā
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. Itās 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 couldnāt prove that Stalien exists.
Come to think of it, I canāt prove that Kim exists.
When did Snopes start fact-checking Facebook opinion posts? It started when the site decided to choose sides, thatās when.
Last week, several sources, all so-called āconservativeā 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.
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 Snopesā āproof.ā 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 DCās findings: the photos offered by Snopes consisted of a screenshot from PBSā 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-SPANās day two coverage. Snopes falsely claimed that photo was from day one of the convention. Mallory Weggemann, the paralympic swimmer who gave Tuesdayās pledge of allegiance, is seen to the left of the C-Span logo, sitting in her wheelchair as the flag-bearers walk past herā¦
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 āright wing sitesā that the Democrats were minimizing the presence of the American flag.
Thatās 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 withoutā¦
ā¦Getting out of the political fact-checking business.
ā¦Firing Dan Evon, who used the misleading flag photos, as well as Kim LaCapria.
ā¦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.
Iāll miss Snopes, but until it acknowledges its ethics breach and convinces me that the siteās days of spinning and lying were a short-lived aberration, I wonāt be using it again.
