Introduction

There's a lot of information out there and we have limited time to parse through even just a fraction of it. Whether it be work, school or family, many of us are preoccupied with our own ambitions and worries. As a result, we try to find ways to do things in less time to increase efficiency.

This demand for greater efficiency has given rise to the "fact checker", usually a website that's designed to check statements and claims of news organizations, politicians, and famous people. On paper, this sounds very nice. Rather than needing to put the time and effort to investigate the facts yourself, a third party has done it for you and the verdict is just a click or tap away.

However, this convenience comes at a serious price. Reliance on "fact checkers" mean forgoing skepticism and blindly accepting what's told to you. On top of that, just because a website calls itself a "fact checker", it doesn't necessarily mean it is exactly that. That's like saying North Korea is a democratic country because the DPRK has "democratic" in its name.

It turns out that many "fact checkers" like Snopes and PolitiFact are nothing more than editorial organizations. Motivated by ideological bias, they would be overzealous, inconsistent, or even just flat out untruthful. This is why it's paramount for individuals to always DYOR (Do Your Own Research) no matter how inconvenient it may be.

How 'Fact Checkers' Don't Really Check Facts

Snopes and PolitiFact are among the most notable fact checkers. The former made a name of itself for debunking urban legends before it shifted it focus to politics. The latter is a nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute. Both organizations have gained a lot of recognition over the past few years, but in doing so, they have abused their popularity to influence public opinion towards a certain direction.

What have they done exactly? As pointed out by Matt Shapiro on his blog, Paradox, they engage in a variety of deceptive tactics though they can be funneled down to one goal: debunking a strawman. Whether the method is re-wording a sentence before fact checking it, fact checking the wrong fact, or just fact checking a statement that was never made, the pattern of shooting down a phantom argument is the same.

A good example would be how PolitiFact "fact checked" a statement on Facebook that Jacob Blake "declared he had a gun in his car and was going to get it" and was "brandishing a knife". As pointed out by Viva Frei, PolitiFact proceeded to "fact check" both statements cumulatively instead of judging them separately. On top of that, the site focused more on whether there was a gun in Jacob Blake's car when it should have focused more on whether he said he had a gun in his car or not. PolitiFact also admitted that there was no evidence for or against that claim, but still proceeded to label it as false when it should have been labelled as inconclusive.

In addition, PolitiFact thought it would be a good idea to "fact check" an interpretative statement on whether Blake "brandished" a knife. The site cited the Merriam-Webster dictionary which defined "brandishing" as waving an object around menacingly. The definition has inherent subjectivity as it is on the eyes of the beholder if Blake was waving whatever item he was holding menacingly or not. PolitiFact also asserted that Blake could not be holding a knife because the picture was too blurry for a person to discern what Blake was holding. However, in that same article, it cited a witness who heard the police shouting "Drop the knife! Drop the knife!"

You can learn more about this in Viva Frei's video below.

This isn't the only example. Viva Frei made another video where he calls PolitiFact out on making excuses for Democrats who used doctored evidence for Trump's 2nd impeachment trial. I won't summarize this one, but the video is below:

Snopes is also just as bad. If you're a fan of the satirical site, The Babylon Bee, you may be familiar with that bizarre moment where Snopes tried to "fact check" the former's satire. It determined The Babylon Bee's articles on whether, for instance, California would impose a tax on breathing, Democrats making Brett Kavanaugh do a DNA test to prove he's not Hitler, or Veggie Tales introducing a cannabis character, as false. Eventually, Snopes made the necessary corrections, but not without insinuating that The Babylon Bee is publishing satirical articles under the pretext of spreading misinformation even though it has a separate website called Not The Bee that published non-satirical articles for distinction.

This Medium article from Political Dissent also provides other good examples of Snopes's sneakiness. Its article, “How Swede is It”, shoots down a strawman that “[Sweden] has passed laws mandating fewer work hours” despite the fact that the Facebook videos it tried to "fact check" never made such a claim. Snopes was also extremely pedantic in another article, “Al Franken Said His Judgment is More Important than His Constituents”. While Franken did not specifically that exact sentence, he did say he would cast his superdelegate vote for then-2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, breaking from Minnesota's caucus results. In a sense, you can interpret that as him considering his judgment to be more valuable than his constituents. But the problem is that Snopes never cited who actually made that specific claim.

Oh, and Snopes co-founder David Mikkelson has been caught plagiarizing several articles. Isn't it comforting how the self-proclaimed arbiters of truth are too lazy to due their own due diligence?

Fact Checkers of Fact Checkers are Just as Bad

I've also came across this article from The New Republic. The site attempts to basically fact check the fact checkers, but some of its arguments are flawed. For instance, when it tried to criticize The Washington Post's fact check on Bernie Sander's statement that “500,000 people go bankrupt every year because they cannot pay their outrageous medical bills”, the article misrepresented what author Salvador Rizzo was saying.

The New Republic states that Rizzo declared the study Sanders referenced to be untrue. However, if you actually read Rizzo's writeup, he was criticizing how Sanders said 500,00 people go bankrupt each year as a result of expensive medical bills and the study he referenced did not state it as such:

Sanders’s statements — “500,000 people go bankrupt every year because they cannot pay their outrageous medical bills” and “500,000 Americans will go bankrupt this year from medical bills” — are unambiguous. He’s saying medical debts caused those 500,000 bankruptcies. However, correlation is not causation, and the study he’s citing doesn’t establish causation for all 500,000 bankruptcy cases.

As a result, The New Republic accused Rizzo for something he didn't do in the first place.

Closing Thoughts

In conclusion, all articles from so-called "fact checkers" should be approached with skepticism. As shown earlier, even the "fact checkers of fact checkers" get things wrong. It's easy to just accept what's given to you at face value. You may have saved time from needing to do your own investigations, but it comes at a serious cost.

Journalism used to be reporting observable facts. You see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, and write down exactly what you have observed. Unfortunately, those days are long gone and today's "journalists" are nothing more than language manipulators that try to nudge you in a certain ideological direction.

It is particularly bad currently since the environment is incredibly emotionally charged. When people are emotional, they are more susceptible to tribalism and more easily manipulated. NYU psychology professor Jay Van Bavel posits in her paper, "The partisan brain: An Identity-based model of political belief", that the "partisan brain" tends to value group belonging over accuracy.

How do we arm ourselves against this phenomenon? I do not consider this a perfect guide, but it should be a good starting point:

(1) Approach all articles as if they are editorials, even if some are not. It's just a good practice to not believe what's written to you in face value because sometimes, non-editorials contain the next thing in the list.

(2) Know how to detect spin and slant. The definitions for both are below, taken from the now-defunct Knife Media and I have given an example for the latter in my writeup about ABC News:

• Spin — “Spin makes language vague, dramatic or sensational — it’s anything that strays from objective, measurable facts. It opens the door to bias and keeps us from a precise understanding of what happened.”
• Slant — “Slant is when you’re told only part of the story, with cherry-picked information that supports a particular viewpoint. This makes the news unbalanced, and keeps our understanding limited and narrow.”

(3) Find as many primary sources/first hand accounts as possible. Videos and pictures on the scene are great, especially if the resolution is clear. Whenever a third party summarizes an event, some details will inevitably be lost in translation. Even more details will be lost in translation if the third party has an ideological bias.

(4) If an article cites a scientific study, definitely read the study to make sure the methodology is sound, i.e. no sampling bias, limitation of potential confounding variables, etc. Also, check to see if there are any other studies that either challenge or contradict the cited paper.