You have to appreciate the irony when a bogus email contains the proof that it is a bogus email. That is the case with an email I received recently that attempts to discredit Snopes.com. With over 6 million visits per month, Snopes.com is a very popular site for checking out internet rumors and suspicious emails.
That reliability has been attacked in, you guessed it, yet another email that has been making the rounds. Despite being discredited, this email, filled with misinformation, continues to float around the internet and arrived recently in my inbox.
It reads as follows:
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READER SENDS:
Snopes.com is not giving the whole story!
I always suspected David and Barbara Mikkelson who were behind “Snopes” were Obama and liberal oriented –now we know!!
Go to Google!!
Who watches the watchers?
Please read it all to the bottom!
Guess we have to use “Truth or Fiction” now ..
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 .
It’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 ..
A few months ago, when my State Farm agent Bud Gregg in Mandeville hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obamaand 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 exec’s 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 contacted anyone with State Farm . Yet, snopes.com http://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 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 web site findings ..
Gee, what a shock?
So, I say this now to everyone who goes to 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
I have found this to be true also!
Many videos of Obama I tried to verify on Snopes and they said they were False . . . . Then they gave their Liberal slant . . . .. !!! I have suspected some problems with snopes for some time now, but I have only caught them in half-truths . If there is any subjectivity they do an immediate full left rudder . www.truthorfiction.com A better source for verification, in my opinion .
I have recently discovered that Snopes . com is owned by a flaming liberal and this man is in the tank for Obama . There are many things they have listed on their site as a hoax and yet you can go to Youtube yourself and find the video of Obama actually saying these things . So you see, you cannot and should not trust Snopes . com . . . . ever for anything that remotely resembles truth! I don’t even trust them to tell me if email chains are hoaxes anymore ..
A few conservatives told me about snopes.com a few months ago and I took it upon myself to do a little research to find out if it was true ..
Well, I found out for myself that it is true .
Anyway just FYI please don’t use Snopes . com anymore for fact checking and make your friends aware of their political leanings as well .
Many people still think Snopes.com is neutral and they can be trusted as factual ..
We need to make sure everyone is aware: that Snopes is a hoax in itself .
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The above email has been researched and debunked by this article at FactCheck.org.
The article is worth reading.
FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania and is a highly respected web site.
Ironically, further proof that the above email is wrong is contained in the Wikipedia link in the email. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes.com. The Wikipedia article validates the reliability of Snopes.com and lists lots os sites that refer to Snopes.com as a reliable source of information, inclusinf the article at FactCheck.org:
FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
National Public Radio
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4819108
Reader’s Digest
http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/rumor-detectives-true-story-or-online-hoax/article122216.html
Network World
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/40861/
CNN
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/10/03/rec.false.rumors/index.html
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,226223,00.html
MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17798063/
Common Sense Media
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/website-reviews/snopes
New York Times
San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/07/DD242504.DTL
Congress.org
http://www.congress.org/news/2009/11/30/six_tips_from_snopescom_on_emails
The National Review
http://old.nationalreview.com/seipp/seipp200407210830.asp
Snopes.com continues to be a well researched, highly respected source of information amidst the sea of information that makes up the internet.