The Media is the Message - How Reliable is Snopes? Twitter Bans Trump But Not Taliban

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‘Fact-checking’ site Snopes admits multiple plagiarism cases

by its own co-founder and CEO

13 Aug, 2021 17:24

Snopes bills itself as “the internet’s definitive fact-checking resource” and a beacon of truth against “misinformation.” However, the website’s co-founder has just been caught publishing dozens of plagiarized articles.

David Mikkelson co-founded Snopes in 1994, and the website has become a key player in the online information wars in recent years. Its supporters see it as a bastion of level-headed truth against an onslaught of partisan “misinformation,” while its detractors see it as yet another biased liberal outlet masquerading as a neutral ‘fact-checker’.

Notice, no one has accused them of ever being conservatively biased!

However, nobody’s accused the site of outright plagiarism until now. In a statement on Friday, the site acknowledged that between 2014 and 2019, Mikkelson published “more than two dozen” stories lifted from other news sites, under either the pseudonym “Jeff Zarronandia” or the generic “Snopes Staff” byline. The plagiarism was uncovered following a tip by Buzzfeed reporter Dean Sterling Jones.

According to the memo, Mikkelson has now been suspended from editorial duties and labels have been attached to the articles containing plagiarized material. 

In a separate statement, Snopes’ staffers condemned Mikkelson’s plagiarism, lamenting the “poor journalistic standards” he displayed. Mikkelson himself admitted to wrongdoing, explaining the plagiarism as “serious lapses in judgement.” 

However, Mikkelson said that he is proud of the work his site has done combating false information about Covid-19, recent elections, and… “Russian disinformation.”

According to Buzzfeed, Mikkelson ripped off other articles to save time and “speed up traffic” to his site. Beyond the two dozen or so articles initially identified, some 140 articles are now under investigation by Snopes, and more than 50 have been found to contain plagiarized elements.

Furthermore, until he was caught, Mikkelson allegedly advised Snopes staffers to engage in crafty plagiarism of their own. “He would instruct us to copy text from other sites, post them verbatim so that it looked like we were fast and could scoop up traffic, and then change the story in real time,” former managing editor Brooke Binkowski told Buzzfeed. “I hated it and wouldn't tell any of the staff to do it, but he did it all the time.”

Shady reporting practices are the least of Snopes’ worries right now. The site is currently embroiled in a legal battle over ownership of its parent company, with Mikkelson’s ex-wife having sold her share in the company to a firm that’s now fighting Mikkelson for legal control. Multiple other cases are ongoing, and the incredibly complex legal struggle is currently costing Snopes up to a third of its revenue every year.

Aw, shucks!

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CNN correspondent says there's 'clearly big holes' in Twitter policy,

as Taliban use network while Trump is banned

17 Aug, 2021 15:01

(L) Donald Trump © REUTERS / Brandon Bell; (R) A Taliban fighter holding an M16 assault rifle

stands outside the Interior Ministry in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 16, 2021. © REUTERS

CNN correspondent Donie O’Sullivan has criticized Twitter’s policy on deplatforming, arguing there are “clearly some big holes” if the Taliban is allowed to use the social network but former President Donald Trump cannot.

A hole so big even a CNN reporter can see it.

After the Taliban took over Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul, O’Sullivan pointed out that “the former President of the United States is banned from Twitter but the Taliban is not.”

“Whether you agree with deplatforming or not, there’s clearly some big holes in the company’s policy,” he observed.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid has been active on Twitter since April 2017 and has nearly 300,000 followers. On Monday, after the Taliban took Kabul, he tweeted that “the general public is happy with the arrival of the Mujahideen and satisfied with the security.”

The Russian ambassador, who remains in Kabul, stated today that the city was very quiet. I assume he wasn't referring to the airport.

Twitter has also refused to rule out handing over Afghanistan’s official government accounts to the country’s new Taliban leaders.

Other social networks, including Facebook, have banned content from the Taliban.

Though many social media users have protested Trump’s Twitter ban, some liberal commentators responded to O’Sullivan’s posts by arguing that the former president was a greater threat than the Taliban and thus deserved the suspension.

“One is an existential threat to our country...one is not,” tweeted one user, while journalist Eric Boehlert wrote, “Trump relentlessly violated Twitter’s terms of service. Has the Taliban account?”

USA Today opinion columnist and former federal prosecutor Michael J. Stern claimed boldly that “the former President has done more damage to the United States” than the Taliban. Matt Negrin, a producer for the Daily Show with Trevor Noah, noted that the Taliban “acknowledged the results of the 2020 election” while “Republicans have not.”

Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter in January after a group of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in Washington, DC to protest Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.

Twitter claimed that Trump would not be able to use the platform “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

Twitter seems to be Americo-centrist rather than the global site it pretends to be!

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