Fake News or Fake Fact-Checkers?

A recent student article recommended the supposed fact-checking website Snopes.  Before you believe everything Snopes tells you, here are some things you ought to know:

• “it’s political “fact-checker” describes herself as a liberal” (she has a long history of taking liberal positions). Daily Caller
• it’s methods are dubious:
  -It claims that partisans who have run for political office can be neutral impartial fact-checkers
  -it won’t reveal how it evaluates the fact-checkers it hires
  -it does not list all the individuals who contribute to a story
  -it turns away questions directed to whether and how it assesses the reliability of its fact-checkers
  -Snopes stories typically don’t mention whether the people under the microscope were contacted for their side of things.  Forbes
• accusations have piled up about the personal behavior of Snopes personnel (e.g., embezzling company money and spending it on prostitutes. See Daily Mail)

 
And Snopes is one of the organizations Facebook uses to sniff out fake news?  Wow.

Like George Orwell said, ‘everybody is lying to you.’