Clay Waters devoted a Dec. 27 Media Research Center post to complaining that the New York Times wrote an article about the fact-checker Snopes, complaining that it was designed to counter Snopes’ purportedly “liberal reputation” amid “allegations of hypocrisy.” Waters also grumbled that the article “accused conservatives of crying ‘fake news’ to discredit the mainstream media.”
Waters cannot credibly counter that claim. The MRC is so dedicated to blaming fake news only on the “liberal media” that it actually reached back to 1980 to rehash the Washington Post “Jimmy’s World” hoax as evidence “the liberal media elite” put out fake news.
Indeed, after quoting the offending passage, Waters does exactly what he complained about being accused of:
Rolling Stone and The Washington Post are not immune to bogus reporting. The Times went all-in on the made-up liberal narrative of racist Duke lacrosse players guilty of raping a stripper. One more recent example of “fake news” from the NYT: Its utter gullibility (and failure to follow up) in swallowing the claims of YouTube hoaxer Adam Saleh, allegedly removed from a Delta plane in London for speaking Arabic on his phone, a tale which conveniently played into the paper’s narrative of Islamophobia but which has been declared false by — guess who? — Snopes.
Waters is self-discrediting in another way: by admitting that Snopes debunked a New York Times story, he undid his claim of Snopes’ “liberal reputation.” Whoops.
Waters also takes offense to the article noting “efforts by highly partisan conservatives to claim that their fact-checking efforts are the same as those of independent outlets like Snopes.” He offers no evidence to rebut the claim, only mockingly references “pristinely objective fact-checkers at Snopes” and whining that “apparently only Snopes and the liberal media are allowed to fact-check,” unlike “Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin.”
Waters cites no alleged “fact-checks” done by Hannity or Malkin, let alone an instance in which they ever found a fellow conservative in the wrong.