Today’s news media is terrible!

The readily apparent bias in media stories has become a meme unto itself.  The latch on to any piece of information and treat it as the most important thing in the world.  What’s more, that piece of information does not even have to be true.  Opinions are treated as facts.  Rumors are treated as facts.  Made up lies are treated as facts – as long they agree with the narrative someone wants to perpetuate. 

In steps the “Fact Checkers”.  Fact checkers serve an important role in today’s world, keeping news media, politicians, and everyday social media posts in check.  They attempt to dampen the spread of false or misleading facts.  Their focus is rightly on objective appraisal of reality.  Does a fact actually exist or not.  An admirable goal, to say the least.  But what happens if these same fact checkers lose sight of objectivity.  What happens when they introduce their own bias into examining “facts”.   

Quite simply, they destroy objectivity. 

The Bias of Snopes

This destruction became clear to me yesterday, when I watched a video by Ben Shapiro and read the associated Snopes article about the Capitol riots on January 6th and the reaction of AOC. I’ve seen parts of AOC’s reaction video, enough to know the gist of it’s coverage.  However, the Snopes article is not about AOC’s reaction video.  It’s about various media outlet’s coverage to her reaction video. 

Snopes titles the article “Did AOC exaggerate the danger she was in during the capital riot?”   Just the title is a read flag. The word “exaggerates” is a subjective evaluation.  It’s an opinion.  So why is Snopes evaluating an opinion?  I thought they only evaluated facts.  This title should immediately warn us to be careful of what follows.  

As I read on, I discover the factual claim Snopes is evaluating: “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exaggerated the danger she was in during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, in that she “wasn’t even in the Capitol building” when the rioting occurred.”  Now, there are several factual claims in that statement.  AOC’s statement, the date of the Capitol riot, where the riot occurred, and where AOC was during the riot.  Snopes, however, continues to include the world “exaggerate” in the claim, adding a subjective evaluation to the factual claims. 

How does Snopes classify this claim? 

Mostly False.  

Here’s how Snopes justifies this classification.  The start by addressing what is true: 

Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t in the main Capitol building where the House and Senate Chambers are located. 

So far, we agree.  It’s true that AOC was in her office, in a building across the street from the Capitol building.  Many Congressmen and Congresswomen have offices in those buildings.  They are sometimes referred to as the Capitol complex, in part because of underground tunnels that run between the buildings.  But they are in fact separate buildings.  Snopes acknowledges this fact.  

What does Snopes describe as false? 

However, Ocasio-Cortez never claimed to be in the main Capitol building. When the attack on the Capitol began, Ocasio-Cortez was, as she stated, in her congressional office, which is located in a network of office buildings immediately surrounding the Capitol, and her office building was one of the two buildings that were evacuated.

Wait. Let’s reread that claim.   It states in part – “…in that she “wasn’t even in the Capitol building” when the rioting occurred.”  That sounds like the claim is true.  AOC wasn’t in the Capitol building.  True, she never claimed to be.  But the facts are in agreement.  She didn’t claim to be there.  The media didn’t claim she was either.  And Snopes acknowledges this fact.  What am I missing?  Oh… the “exaggerates” part.    

In the description of their reasoning, Snopes bias shines through.  In it, they describe how “It took less than 48 hours for the right-wing disinformation machine to contrive a way to minimize what Ocasio-Cortez said she had experienced.” Already, Snopes makes clear with the phrase “right-wing disinformation machine” that they don’t trust anything coming from the mouth of a right wing politician or pundit.  Whether that is warranted or not, a site purporting to be objective assessor facts should avoid such phrases.  They are imputing value judgements when only fact evaluations should be included.  And “contrive”… again using a loaded verb to describe the actions of those Snopes doesn’t approve of.  

How would a neutral fact checker write that sentence?  How about “Within 48 hours, right-wind pundits claimed that Ocasio-Cortex’s experience exaggerated the danger was in.”  That would be consistent with the claim above and free of value-driven phrases.  

And then, there’s the evidence.  They say: “…conservative news outlets and social media conspiracy trolls latched on to the misleading claim that Ocasio-Cortez “wasn’t in the Capitol building” and therefore was not in harm’s way, as she had described in the Instagram video.”  The first two headlines Snopes uses as proof state: “AOC Wasn’t Even in the Capitol Building During Her ‘Near Death’ Experience,” from RedState and “AOC Was Not Inside Capitol Building During Breach on Jan. 6” from the Daily Wire.  As already discussed above, she wasn’t in the Capitol building.  So those headlines are 100% true. 

Just to reiterate, here’s what Snopes said is true:

Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t in the main Capitol building where the House and Senate Chambers are located. 

Here’s a headline that is deemed false:

AOC Was Not Inside Capitol Building During Breach on Jan. 6

They say the same thing!

I could go on, highlighting every instance of bias in the Snopes article, using loaded phrases such as “emotional 90-minute video” and “ensuing chaos”.  But I won’t.  I have my opinions, but that’s not the point of this article. Rather, I want to discuss two things, 1) the motivation of Snopes and 2) the future of fact checking. 

The Motivation of Snopes

In 2009, Snopes had a track record of fact checking political statements that seemed free of bias. Since then, the standard for fact checking seems to have slipped. For many years, I’ve privately been disillusioned with Snopes and their increasingly biased approach to fact checking.  

The facts, as I outlined above, are not in dispute.  What is in dispute is the phrase “exaggerates”, a value-laden word that suggests AOC overstated the danger she was in. So let’s break down the facts about AOC’s video. 

Did AOC imply she was in danger?  Yes. 

Did she genuinely feel unsafe?  Likely.

Is that feeling warranted?  I’m in no position to judge people’s feelings (and neither are you).  Feelings are what they are.

Was she in imminent danger?  No.  The rioters never reached her building.  The evacuation of her building was precautionary. 

Did she imply she was in imminent danger?  Yes, on multiple occasions, such as when the police officer came to evacuate her office.  She stated that there were loud bangs on her door, loud bangs over and over again.  She kept repeating the loud bangs in her video, as if they were some sort of threat. 

Could they have just been loud knocks, knocks designed to be loud to get people’s attention?  Most likely.  A police officer attempting to evacuate a building isn’t going to mess around with soft quiet knocks.  They want to get people’s attention so that the act quickly.  But she didn’t call them loud knocks and she called them bangs.  It seems she is trying to exaggerate what happened. That’s not to say she didn’t fear for her life.  She may truly have had that fear.  But the wording of her experience seems designed to highlight the worst possible outcome. And when she discovered he was a police officer, she implied he was suspicious and “didn’t feel right.”  Yet she obviously trusted him enough to follow his instructions for evacuation.  Again, it seems exaggeration may be at play. Based on my observations of the video, the exaggeration judgment seems justified – but I acknowledge this is my subjective evaluation. 

Yet, Snopes calls it mostly false.  In this case, it seems as if Snopes is motivated to repress anything negative said about AOC.  They want her “experiences” accepted without question.  While it’s true that her experiences and her feelings are her own, that doesn’t mean 1) that those feelings are well adjusted reactions to the situation or 2) that her explanation of those feelings and experiences are free from exaggeration. 

People exaggerate – that much we know.  Politicians more so than most. It takes no stretch to imagine AOC fits this mold. 

Through this claim, Snopes shows a severe lack of objectivity.  The purposeful focus on the subjective aspects of the claim gives them wiggle room to pretend they are factual.  But even the subjective judgment of “exaggerates” is plausible.  At best, Snopes should classify this article as Mostly true.  That fact that they didn’t shows the serious bias of Snopes in their reporting, particularly in this instance. 

The Future of Fact Checking

With a deluge of information and “facts” in today’s world, the necessity of fact checkers will become increasingly critical.  It becomes impossible for an individual to verify all the information presented to them.  There’s just too much damn information. Dependence on fact checkers, people whose job it is to verify facts, and experts must become a norm in society. We can’t function in any other way.

In order for fact checking to be effective, we need fact checkers to apply objectivity. They must carefully strip away subjective opinions and value judgments and focus on just the facts. They must study techniques for mitigating biases and find ways to think more clearly. This process requires rigorous self-assessment to remove personal feelings, extraneous influences, and other opinions from impacting the result.    

If fact checkers start introducing personal biases in their fact checking work, it 1) makes it more difficult for people to relate to the world and 2) spreads the mistaken belief that facts don’t matter (because fact checkers are sometimes wrong).