David and Barbara Mikkelson are the husband-and-wife duo behind the myth-busting Web site Snopes.com.
Guy Raz/NPR
[Attributed to Alan Strong]
Is SNOPES pure bull?
Snopes is often quoted as the be all and end all for Truth Verification on many sites.
Maybe we should believe nothing of what we hear and 1/2 of what we see??
About _SNOPES.COM_ (http://snopes.com/) '
Who watches the watchers?
For the past few years _http://www.snopes.com/_ (http://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 _http://www.snopes.com/._
(http://www.snopes.com/)
Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it - kinda made 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
_http://www.snopes.com/_ (http://www.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 Obama and made a big splash across
the internet, 'supposedly' the Mikkelsons claim to have researched this issue
before posting their findings on _http://www.snopes.com/._
(http://www.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
[url=fromhttp://_www.snopes.
(http://www.snopes.com/][url=
ever contacted anyone with State Farm. Yet, _http://www.snopes.com/_
(http://www.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 Mikkelsons are Democrats 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
Mikkelsons liberalism revealing itself in their website findings. Gee,
what a shock?
So, I say this now to everyone who goes to _http://www.snopes.com/_
(http://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 Mikkelsons do.
After all, I can> personally vouch from my own experience for their 'not'
fully looking into things.
_http://www.wikipedia.org/_ (http://www.wikipedia.org/)
_http://www.snopes.com/_ (http://www.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. Truth or Fiction's web-site
_http://www.truthorfiction.
for verification, in my opinion.
I have recently discovered that is _http://www.snopes.com/_
(http://www.snopes.com/) 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
_http://www.snopes.com/_ (http://www.snopes.com/) for anything that remotely resembles
truth (SIC ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO LIBERAL vs CONSERVATIVE CONCERNS)! I
don't even trust them to tell me if email chains are hoaxes anymore.
A few conservative speakers on MySpace told me about
_http://www..snopes.com/_ (http://www..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
_http://www.snopes.com/_ (http://www.snopes.com/) anymore for fact checking and make your
friends aware of their political leanings as well. Many people still think
_http://www.snopes.com/_ (http://www.snopes.com/) is neutral and they can be
trusted as factual. We need to make sure everyone is aware that that is a
hoax in itself.
Thank you,
Alan Strong, CEO/Chairman
Commercial Programming Systems, Inc.
4400 Coldwater Canyon Ave. Suite 200
Studio City, CA. 91604-5039
Phone: 888-277-4562 EX. 306/
Direct 888-812-9234 or 818-308-8561
Mobile 818-522-9319
FAX 818-301-2054.
3 comments:
This one has been long since put to bed. Even the most ardent supporters of this version of events have quietly backed away from it.
I'm not trying to dog you, just giving you a heads up.
Of course anything you read on the internet is subject to question but the version at the following url has been widely acknowledged to be the final word.
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/snopescom/
And of course you can visit the original snopes posting and read the description of events. You will immediately notice inconsistencies between what Alan Strong CEO/Chairman said was in the snopes post, and what is actually in the snopes post.
See here:http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/chicken.asp
Why rely solely upon one source? I use Snopes and a variety of other sites when checking facts.
Snopes checks out and tracks with them.
Nothing to see here. Move along. :)
On the same page questioning the veracity of Snopes.com investigations, the page editor has attributed a quote to Joseph Goebbels:
'If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained...'
That quote does not seem to be in any of Goebbels' actual writing or speeches, although it is quoted extensively by many, especially by Rush Limbaugh. According to a Jewish holocaust history site, the Institute for Historical Review, Goebbels own view of propaganda was the polar opposite of that quote. Goebbels believed that propaganda had to rely on a base of facts to be successful, and he criticized the British for lying in their propaganda. Quote:
'In fact, Goebbels' views were quite different than what this fraudulent quote suggests. He consistently held that propaganda should be accurate and truthful.
'In an address given in September 1934 in Nuremberg, he said: "Good propaganda does not need to lie, indeed it may not lie. It has no reason to fear the truth. It is a mistake to believe that people cannot take the truth. They can. It is only a matter of presenting the truth to people in a way that they will be able to understand. A propaganda that lies proves that it has a bad cause. It cannot be successful in the long run."
'In an article written in 1941, he cited examples of false British wartime claims, and went on to charge that British propagandists had adopted the "big lie" technique that Hitler had identified and condemned in his book Mein Kampf. Goebbels wrote:
'"The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous."'
Ironic, eh.
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