|
?:reviewBody
|
-
Snopes.com is a secret tool of the Democratic party to promote Barack Obama-Fiction! Snopes.com is a secret tool of the Democratic Party to promote Barack Obama- Fiction! Summary of eRumor: An eRumor about Snopes.com accusing them being owned by a flaming liberal and this man is in the tank for Obama. The Truth: In October, 2008, stories began circulating via forwarded emails that the popular urban legends site Snopes.com was owned by liberals and was in the tank for presidential candidate Barack Obama. As with many forwarded emails, the criticism did not include any example of what the writer of the email claimed was the difference between what Snopes.com reported and what Barack Obama had actually said. Snopes.com is an excellent site that has become an authoritative source for information about urban legends and forwarded emails. We regard David and Barbara Mikkelson, the founders and operators of Snopes.com, as colleagues and professional researchers who have earned a good reputation for what they do. We can give a unique perspective on this story because we do the same kind of work as Snopes.com and have sometimes been the target of similar criticism. We’ve got a collection of emails that have come to TruthOrFiction.com accusing us of being right wing whackos as well as liberals and communists. We’ve been suspected of being owned and operated by both Republicans and Democrats. We’ve been called Christian propagandists as well as atheists pretending to be neutral. We occasionally receive emails that have elaborate theories about who really owns us and what our real motives are. The bottom line is that if you try to report the truth, there will be those who don’t like the truth you’ve reported and who will develop suspicions about why you did. That, in our view, is what is happening with Snopes. The 2008 presidential campaign has been one of the most intense and unique in our nation’s history and has prompted more political eRumors than any presidential campaign in our experience, especially about Barack Obama. These anti-Snopes emails have probably been prompted by someone who does not like Barack Obama and does not like the fact that Snopes (or TruthOrFiction.com for that matter) has debunked some of the emails that are not true about him. One of the versions of the eRumor mentions TruthOrFiction.com and recommends our site. We appreciate that, but we want to say for the record that we’ve had nothing to do with this eRumor about Snopes.com and we condemn it. Snopes Exposed? In August 2010 this rumor morphed when President Obama appointed Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. An August 4, 2010 World Net Daily article alleged that this was a political payback for several cases questioning the President’s citizenship that were denied by Kagan. Snopes reported that these allegations were false. Shortly after that inboxes were flooded with emails with the subject header Snopes Exposed! alleging that they lied about their findings to protect Obama. TruthOrFiction.com also investigated this rumor and found that World Net Daily released the story but the filed court cases did not question the President’s birth records. World Net Daily corrected the story and posted a comment that said, An earlier version of this story incorrectly described a series of cases for which Elena Kagan represented the government as eligibility cases. Those cases, in fact, were a series of unrelated disputes pending before the Supreme Court and the references have been removed from this report. Click here for our findings. The George Soros Connection? In 2011 this eRumor once again went viral with the additional allegation that George Soros was financing Snopes. Snopes denies this on the F.A.Q. page on their website. Soros has been known to contribute to MoveOn.Org and Media Matters. updated 08/15/11 Posted in Miscellaneous , Politics
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}