A Dec. 24 WorldNetDaily article is largely a rehash of a Daily Mail hit job on the fact-checker website Snopes, making sure to play up claims that “One of Snopes’ leading fact-checkers is a former sex-and-fetish blogger who described her routine as smoking pot and posting to Snopes.com, and the company now is embroiled in a legal dispute between its former married founders that includes accusations the CEO used company money for prostitutes.”
This is another attempt to discredit those with whom Facebook is working to ferret out fake news on its website. WND is a major source of fake news, and needless to say, WND doesn’t mention that Snopes has busted it for its falsehoods a few times. Further, at no point does WND prove Snopes got anything wrong in its fact-checks, despite its whining that it “has been criticized by conservatives for a left-leaning bias.”
WND is also silent about the Daily Mail’s motivations for its hit job, and its reputation is much different that WND’s biased description of it. Richard Bartholomew points out that Snopes ” enjoys a reputation for truthfulness and accuracy because it has earned it. Nowhere does Snopes demand that we simply trust the site’s judgement – instead, it provides judicious quotes from relevant sources, which anyone can then check for themselves.”
As the Guardian notes, the Daily Mail “has come under Snopes’ microscope enough times to be called in July ‘Britain’s highly unreliable Daily Mail’ by a Snopes writer who just happens to be named in the Mail story.” Rather than having a debate about Facebook’s fact-checker policy, the Guardian adds, “the Mail has attempted to cast doubt on the notion of fact checking. In the battle between those who profit from playing fast and loose with the truth and those trying to fix the fake news problem, the Mail has made it clear in which camp it sits.”
WND is lazily engaging in a second-hand hit job on not only a political enemy — to WND anyone who tells facts inconvenient to WND’s right-wing agenda is an enemy, just like we are — but a critic who knows all about WND’s shoddy reporting record.