- Oct 31, 2012
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Snopes is a left wing rag
Snopes is a bad, dangerous, deceptive site. They use a very conscious, malicious form of misinformation to mislead and manipulate their readers by selective application of facts and omission of context. Usually they do this to present a partisan picture advancing a particular narrative, specifically the preferred perspective the corporate establishment wants to promote.
Their strategy, used time and time again, is simple:
What is important to note is the contents of the “what’s true” section, which is usually the bulk of the story.
“How Swede is It” is an excellent nonpartisan example of their prevalent and very transparent tactics in action. This story focuses heavily on the assertion that Sweden is “officially moving to” a 6 hour workday, as described in some viral videos people share on Facebook. Focusing on the semantics and interpreting that as “the country has passed laws mandating fewer work hours” they are correct in stating that statement is false. However the video did not made that assertion. And when Snopes acknowledges that “some businesses in Sweden have started experimenting with a shorter workday” that is the lead that gets inevitably buried. That is true.
But Snopes does not care to make true claims and rate them as such.
Atthis point we should ask some hard questions about Snopes. Why would an ostensibly leftist publication want to advance a misconception that Sweden is not continuing to improve its impressive labor landscape in the direction of the 6 hour day and the 4 day week workers have long yearned to achieve?
You will not necessarily be able to find Snopes lying directly, but even the most casual analysis will consistently reveal an abundance of extraordinarily harmful omissions and strawmen abounding almost any even moderately politicized topic. It’s not an unfounded assertion that Snopes is rife with misinformation.
Let’s look at a more specific example which gives a clearer picture of these tactics again but with more overt deception and more direct political implications: “Al Franken Said His Judgment is More Important than His Constituents”. Snopes rates that as Mostly False. WHAT specifically is false about that statement? It is false that Al Franken said the words “My judgment is more important than the votes of my constituents”.
No shit Snopes. Did anyone ever, ever think that? Ever SAY that?
Snopes cleverly describes the claim as “Al Franken told a CNN Interviewer that his judgment as a superdelegate was more important than that of his constituency”. Yes, that did not precisely happen. Yet, in the very headline they acknowledge “Al Franken affirmed that his superdelegate vote would break from Minnesota’s caucus results”. And in the “What’s True” section it affirms “In a CNN interview, Senator Al Franken confirmed he planned to break with voters in his state by casting his superdelegate vote for Hillary Clinton; Franken’s constituents overwhelmingly selected Sen. Bernie Sanders in the state’s caucuses”.
So, I’ll ask you, would you consider the gist of this story mostly false?
With Snopes’ formula they can slightly adjust the phrasing and create a strawman to label any truth false.
When a site has the sole focus, the one job, of disproving fiction and clarifying fact, and that site consistently manipulates information to do the very opposite, it certainly becomes a rather chilling emblem for the age of doublespeak we live in. Indeed it is hard to find a more glaring indictment of the privatized information Gatekeepers our Orwellian authoritarian corporate state afford platforms and direct traffic to.
Meanwhile Facebook and Google continue to shut down pages and censor voices critical of militarism, colonialism and capitalism. Truly we live in alarming times.
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