A few months ago I wrote about how the relatively well-known "fact-checking" website snopes.com, which during its initial years appeared to be relatively conservative in its politics, seems to have swung to the very extreme left of the political spectrum, becoming so favorable towards extreme left-wing politicians that they seem to be ready to even distort facts in order to paint them in a positive light, or remove negative light from them.
Out of curiosity, I decided to browse the site a bit, to see how widespread this seems to be there. I browsed the "what's new?" section of the site, which lists all the newest articles posted there.
Once upon a time, decades ago, the website was almost completely dedicated to debunking or confirming urban legends and other similar stories and claims circulating the internet and popular culture. Almost all of the articles were like that. In other words, the claim, a verdict ("true", "false", or something in between), and an explanation of why.
Judging form the "what's new?" section of the site, however, it seem to have changed to mostly be some kind of news site, with an extreme slant towards the regressive left. I browsed approximately 150 of the newest articles posted on the site, and without exaggeration less than 10% of them were any sort of "true"/"false"/etc. fact-checking articles. All the others were just news stories, with no fact-checking verdict at all.
And a very clear pattern became very obvious quite quickly: A relatively large proportion of these news articles (and even the few fact-checking articles) were about US politics. And from those, I didn't see a single one that was in some way favorable, or even neutral, towards Donald Trump, the Republican Party, or any Republican politician, or negative towards any Democtratic politician. In every single case that the article was about a politician, it was negative if the politician was a Republican, and positive or neutral if it was a Democrat.
From the actual fact-checking articles that dealt with Trump or some other Republican politician, not a single one was a positive claim judged as "true", or a negative claim judged as "false". Every single time when there was a negative claim about Trump or a Republican politician, it was almost invariably declared as "true" or "partially true". Not a single negative claim about a Democratic politician was declared as "true". Every single one was declared "false".
I don't know if all of those fact-checking articles are actually factual and correct (which I suspect might not be the case in at least some instances, given the precedent I described in my previous related blog post), but at the very least I think there's a quite clear case of selection bias in what kind of news stories and claims Snopes is choosing to add to their website. It's quite clear that if there's any news story or true claim about Trump or the Republicans that's positive, Snopes is skipping it. Likewise if there's any negative story about a Democrat, they are also skipping it. They seem to be deliberately choosing only news stories and claims that paint Trump and Republicans in a negative light, and Democrats in a positive light.
How and why did Snopes become like this?
Out of curiosity, I decided to browse the site a bit, to see how widespread this seems to be there. I browsed the "what's new?" section of the site, which lists all the newest articles posted there.
Once upon a time, decades ago, the website was almost completely dedicated to debunking or confirming urban legends and other similar stories and claims circulating the internet and popular culture. Almost all of the articles were like that. In other words, the claim, a verdict ("true", "false", or something in between), and an explanation of why.
Judging form the "what's new?" section of the site, however, it seem to have changed to mostly be some kind of news site, with an extreme slant towards the regressive left. I browsed approximately 150 of the newest articles posted on the site, and without exaggeration less than 10% of them were any sort of "true"/"false"/etc. fact-checking articles. All the others were just news stories, with no fact-checking verdict at all.
And a very clear pattern became very obvious quite quickly: A relatively large proportion of these news articles (and even the few fact-checking articles) were about US politics. And from those, I didn't see a single one that was in some way favorable, or even neutral, towards Donald Trump, the Republican Party, or any Republican politician, or negative towards any Democtratic politician. In every single case that the article was about a politician, it was negative if the politician was a Republican, and positive or neutral if it was a Democrat.
From the actual fact-checking articles that dealt with Trump or some other Republican politician, not a single one was a positive claim judged as "true", or a negative claim judged as "false". Every single time when there was a negative claim about Trump or a Republican politician, it was almost invariably declared as "true" or "partially true". Not a single negative claim about a Democratic politician was declared as "true". Every single one was declared "false".
I don't know if all of those fact-checking articles are actually factual and correct (which I suspect might not be the case in at least some instances, given the precedent I described in my previous related blog post), but at the very least I think there's a quite clear case of selection bias in what kind of news stories and claims Snopes is choosing to add to their website. It's quite clear that if there's any news story or true claim about Trump or the Republicans that's positive, Snopes is skipping it. Likewise if there's any negative story about a Democrat, they are also skipping it. They seem to be deliberately choosing only news stories and claims that paint Trump and Republicans in a negative light, and Democrats in a positive light.
How and why did Snopes become like this?
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