At Snopes, a Peek Down the Right-Wing Rabbit Holes

[DonViejo]

‘FALSE’
At Snopes, a Peek Down the Right-Wing Rabbit Holes

Fake news is a perfect marriage of corrupt capitalism (make-a-buck pranksters) and corrupt constitutionalism (people who lie under protection of the First Amendment).

MICHAEL TOMASKY
11.17.17 5:00 AM ET

The other day, some rabbit hole I was venturing down online delivered me to Snopes.com, which I’d not visited in a while. In my memory, Snopes was called upon to settle, if such was possible, the occasional political debate; but more often it declaimed on questions of the “is the moon really made of green cheese?” variety.

What I saw staggered me—and somehow made it starkly plain to me how close to the precipice we are as a nation.

As I toggled over the home page, I was flabbergasted by what a high percentage of Snopes articles now are devoted to debunking fake news. And I don’t mean CNN. I mean, if I may use the phrase, real fake news. Garbage. And more specifically, right-wing garbage. Some stuff that’s in the actual news, though completely distorted, and other stuff that’s just totally made up, that who-knows-how-many thousands, or millions, of people are out there believing.

We begin, of course, with Hillary. “Hillary Clinton Gave 20 Percent of United States’ Uranium to Russia in Exchange for Clinton Foundation Donations?” was the most-searched story on the site Thursday. All week. Probably all month. You know, I trust, the basic allegation, so I won’t repeat it.

Snopes rates this, of course, as “False.” Because it is false. In fact, it’s insane. She had no known role in the decision, and there is no American uranium in Putin’s power-hungry hands. But at least this one is in some sense tethered to planet Earth.

more
https://www.thedailybeast.com/at-snopes-a-peek-down-the-right-wing-rabbit-holes

[MountCleaners]

1. Not only that, but...

Snopes is pretty objective. If a rumor or bs story was beneficial to our side, but turned out to be bs, they would report it. But when I link to a Snopes article on FB, in order to debunk the fake news posts I see on FB, right-wingers don't accept it.

They have no understanding of the culture of skepticism and debunking. No familiarity with it at all.

[FM123]

2. You are so right about that.

I have a neighbor who emailed a fake story out to all of us about Hillary and I replied with a "nope, not true" and a link to Snopes debunking it. His reply? "Snopes lies!"

[Hortensis]

8. EVERY source respected for journalistic integrity, every one

that's even been nominated for a prestigious award over the past several years, is shunned by most of the right as full of fake, left wing news. One only need to mention a name for them to reject an article as complete lies, including right-wing journals that aren't extreme enough.

Every once in a while someone we've known has pointed out something that pleases from one of those, and we know this means Hannity, or Rush or someone has cherrypicked some text they can use to prove they're not cut off from information at all.

Sadly, last summer a garage sale had boxes of years of National Geographics, a lot in pleasantly used condition because they'd gotten "family" use, pictures cut out for school projects, etc. The grandfather had collected them for decades. Until a handful of years ago when he realized NG had been taken over by the left wing. This was long before NG finally gave up on trying to handle climate change delicately to keep people like this reading, but climate change was only one of his problems. He went off on something about giant lies about some Central American country to prove how corrupt it had become. May have been about coffee...? But in any case, he no longer could stand to even have the old ones stored in his garage. National Geographic.

[LonePirate]

3. Just like in 2016, RWers want to believe these are true and they are too stupid/lazy to refute them.

Their behavior becomes predictable so other people take advantage of that behavior for profit and/or amusement.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. Pretty much every single day

I check something out at Snopes. I see stuff here, on FB, and in emails that people have posted without bothering to check it out or ask themselves, "Can that possibly be true?"

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Tomasky doesn't seem to have been fact-checking RW claims for several years, then

By the time Trump announced his candidacy, Snopes had had to refute so much RW bullshit that any link to it in open-to-all-sides online discussion tended to get the reply "Snopes is left wing - that doesn't count". I think he ought to keep up with events if he's going to write online, not be a couple of years behind the rest of us.

[HughBeaumont]

6. I can't even say the phrase . . .

. . . "You don't know HOW many times on FB I got some wingnut/AnCap/Crank Magnet yapping about how Snopes isn't a credible source", because we've ALL run into these multiple jokers.

Snopes is quite unbiased. Sorry, wingnuts, that what you choose to believe is by and large a steaming mound of bullshit, but still it is so.

[kwassa]

7. PolitiFact and Factcheck.org are also good sites for fact checking.

and many papers have started fact-checking sections of their own.