Snopes I just found out a few weeks ago run by a liberal husband and wife!
email on Snopes
There are so many citizens getting involved in civic affairs and a wealth of information streaming in. When I get emails making claims or supposedly breaking news, I have to pause and try to check the sources, or go to a fact checker site. You just type in the info in a question format. The best known are:
www.snopes.com
www.cbo.gov
www.factcheck.com
www.ask.com
I feel that I have detected a bias in snopes especially. While checking snopes for the basis of quotes made by President Obama, snopes gave approximately a paragraph to explain each sentence that was uttered by Obama. Words mean things !! It should not take a paragraph to explain a simple quote.
Therefore I feel that there is a leftist bias to these sites. However, I have to add, that when I have checked some of the outlandish emails that I have received, the fact checking sites have saved me a lot of the embarrassment of sending on inaccurate information. So I send this email FYI...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes.com
Snopes Exposed
For the past few years www.snopes.com has positioned itself, or others have labeled it, as the ‘tell all final word’ on any comment, claim and email.
But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes.com . Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it - kinda makes you wonder what they were hiding. Well, finally we know. It is run by a husband and wife team - that’s right, no big office of investigators and researchers, no team of lawyers. t’s just a mom-and-pop operation that began as a hobby.
David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando Valley of California started the website about 13 years ago - and they have no formal background or experience in investigative research. After a few years it gained popularity believing it to be unbiased and neutral, but over the past couple of years people started asking questions who was behind it and did they have a selfish motivation? The reason for the questions - or skepticisms - is a result of snopes.com claiming to have the bottom line facts to certain questions or issue when in fact they have been proven wrong. Also, there were criticisms the Mikkelsons were not really investigating and getting to the ‘true’ bottom of various issues. I can personally vouch for that complaint.
A few months ago, when my State Farm agent Bud Gregg in Mandeville hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across the internet, supposedly the Mikkelson’s claim to have researched this issue before posting their findings on snopes.com . In their statement they claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg into taking down the sign, when in fact nothing of the sort ‘ever’ took place.
I personally contacted David Mikkelson (and he replied back to me) thinking he would want to get to the bottom of this and I gave him Bud Gregg’s contact phone numbers - and Bud was going to give him phone numbers to the big execs at State Farm in Illinois who would have been willing to speak with him about it. He never called Bud. In fact, I learned from Bud Gregg no one from snopes.com ever contaced anyone with State Farm. Yet, snopes.com issued a statement as the ‘final factual word’ on the issue as if they did all their homework and got to the bottom of things - not!
Then it has been learned the Mikkelson’s are a very Democratic (party) and extremely liberal. As we all now know from this presidential election, liberals have a purpose agenda to discredit anything that appears to be conservative. There has been much criticism lately over the internet with people pointing out the Mikkelson’s liberalism revealing itself in their website findings. Gee, what a shock?
So, I say this now to everyone who goes to www.snopes.com to get what they think to be the bottom line facts...’proceed with caution.’ Take what it says at face value and nothing more. Use it only to lead you to their references where you can link to and read the sources for yourself. Plus, you can always google a subject and do the research yourself. It now seems apparent that’s all the Mikkelson’s do. After all, I can personally vouch from my own experience for their ‘not fully’ looking into things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes.com