
Why is Mail Online going after the fact checkers? - CarolineW
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/23/why-is-mail-online-going-after-fact-checkers-snopes
======
crucini
Applying the idea of "fact checking" to politically charged topics inherently
raises problems. Snopes was a good site to find out if there were really
alligators in the sewers. The Forbes article cited by rokosbasilisk here seems
to demand a high standard of quality from fact checkers - but who is to pay
for it?

Now, The Guardian chose some headlines to illustrate this story with.
Presumably the Guardian considers them good examples of "fake news". One of
them is about the Clintons "stealing $200K worth of furniture" etc. Politifact
has a surprisingly detailed page on this allegation. The result is, typically,
gray. It wasn't $200K (suspiciously round number); closer to $190K. And the
Clintons paid for or returned the "stolen" items; which either makes them "not
stolen" or "stolen and returned".

But the whole claim of "theft" rests on the items' designation as national
property, which may not have been clear at the time.

Given that this headline is an example of what the media (including Facebook)
wants to shield the masses from - what then do they want the masses to hear?
Is it (a) nothing, (b) inoculation/discrediting by labelling the meme as "fake
news"; (c) a less sensationalized headlines?

~~~
skrowl
Some political activists have no choice but to yell "Fake News!" to
rationalize censorship now, because they basically used "Racist!" to censor
views they didn't like so much that the word no longer has meaning. It makes
you wonder what will come next.

The funny (or sad) part is that silencing dissenting opinions via means like
this is the very definition of fascism, but the people so quick to yell "fake
news!" now are the same ones who were calling their friends fascist on social
media 2 months ago just for supporting a different presidential candidate than
they were.

~~~
otalp
It is less a question of censorship and more a question of removing
egregiously bad "news" that is explicitly written to collect views.

If you believe flagging false headlines like

“Michelle Obama DEMANDS Americans PAY UP To Give Her Mom A Cushy $160k
Pension”

is fascism, and that advocating war-crimes and bringing back libel laws like
Trump did is not, I don't know what to say.

There is a whole industry set up to profit from making fake news that they
know is false: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/in-macedonias-
fa...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/in-macedonias-fake-news-
hub-teen-shows-ap-how-its-
done/2016/12/02/98bce38e-b88d-11e6-939c-91749443c5e5_story.html?utm_term=.f80a4c745b5a)

If you think any attempt to reduce profiteering by knowingly generating fake
news that gets millions of shares is fascism, I'm not sure what isn't.

I'm not sure if there has been any 'transition' from accusations of racism to
fake news. The "birther" controversy, especially the way it treated by places
like Brietbart was both racist and fake, I doubt that you dispute that. Trump
retweeting Stormfront infographics that claim ridiculous stuff like 90% of
white murder victims were killed by black people is both racist and fake. This
is hardly a "liberal" or globalist position, even Fox news called out Trump on
that.

Regardless of political orientation, objective facts do exist. I don't believe
in censorship, but I think if a site wants to flag a post saying "reasons why
the moon landing is a globalist conspiracy" as false, I'm not going to cry
that it's literally fascism.

------
ikeboy
It's poor form for the guardian to not link the original article, at
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-
fac...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fact-checker-
arbitrate-fake-news-accused-defrauding-website-pay-prostitutes-staff-includes-
escort-porn-star-Vice-Vixen-domme.html)

The guardian article is a hit piece, and a poorly written one at that. It
gives very little information and a lot of vague or indirect criticism. (Makes
you think how much more effective hit pieces can be when the writer actually
has something to work with: even this will probably convince a lot of people
that critiques of snopes are invalid.)

On priors I'd expect there to be issues with the mail article, but the
guardian doesn't tell me what they are.

~~~
anigbrowl
It's a hit piece, but then so is the Daily Mail article, and the DM has been a
scandal sheet for most of its history.

~~~
ikeboy
Yeah but I have higher expectations from the guardian.

------
rokosbasilisk
I would have agreed with this article until the forbes story broke.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-
dail...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-
snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/#33d2e4cc1e02)

It makes snopes look worse run than a college newspaper.

I also agree with the forbes article in that we need much much tranparency and
openess from our fact checkers.

~~~
Natsu
There's a lawyer's saying that when the facts are against you, you pound on
the table. The Guardian won't even repeat, let alone attempt to refute,
anything published in the Daily Mail.

Just let that sink in for a moment: the _Guardian_ is unable to dispute the
_Daily Mail_ on a factual level on this one. Instead they talk about
everything and anything else rather than discuss the actual subject matter in
the reports. "Nothing to see here, move along!" But even a stopped clock can
be right twice a day. And this would hardly be the first real news broken by a
tabloid.

We live in interesting times. I just hope they're not the "interesting times"
from that fictitious Chinese curse.

~~~
dragonwriter
> There's a lawyer's saying that when the facts are against you, you pound on
> the table.

The usual saying is, "When the law is on your side, argue the law; when the
facts are on your side, argue the law; when neither is on your side, pound the
table."

~~~
ternaryoperator
The quote appears to be from Carl Sandburg[1]

The variant I've heard is: "When the facts are against you, argue the law;
when the law is against you, argue the facts; if both the facts and the law
are against you, get a new client."

[1] [http://able2know.org/topic/98689-1](http://able2know.org/topic/98689-1)

------
kaleidic
I learnt from Popper that the facts are theory - laden and from Feynman that
science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

This whole attempt to control the discourse is doomed. There's no such thing
as objectivity - ones understanding of the world is shaped by one's
experiences and who one is, and that's true for institutions too.

Character matters for an editorial institution, as does form. Snopes built its
reputation one way, and became something quite different. And yet they have
been granted a role of high influence by Facebook and thus it's in the spirit
of good journalism to look into the extent to which they deserve this
influence, and the character of the people involved does matter.

One could say that the Mail also isn't a globalist paper and so that naturally
sets their perspective against Snopes.

~~~
otalp
>There's no such thing as objectivity

Obama being born in Kenya is objectively false.

Podesta running a child-trafficking ring in pizza places around Chicago is
objectively false.

Moon landing and flat earth conspiracies are objectively false.

Thinking that Global warming is a hoax created by China is objectively false.

I hate to bring up the cliché of "post-truth" but when you say things like
"there is no such thing as objectivity" it is difficult not to do so.

I'm not directing this at you in particular, but it's a common line of
argument. Say Snopes write that the claim that Global Warming is a hoax is
false, or that Obama isn't a secret Islamic radical. When they dispute
something that many people believe in, the argument from a depressingly high
number of people is not to scrutinise the facts that Snopes used and come up
with flaws in their reasoning.

It is to vaguely accuse them of being "globalist", say that their argument is
not valid because their founder did something, and that there is no objective
truth.

Reality is complex, but the problem arises when people use this complexity to
mean that any belief they hold, however unsubstantiated, cannot be falsified
because everyone has an (((agenda))), which is defined as holding any view, on
any subject, slightly different from their own.

Sure, I think Snopes should be looked into, like any institution with
influence. But I am far more interested in journalism that extensively rebuts
many of _their arguments_ \- and they have made _a lot_ of arguments, rather
than providing fodder for the inevitable future ad-hominem rebuttals.

------
alex-
I guess a publication like the mail has two big reasons to feel threatened by
a rise of fact checking sites.

1\. It inhibits their ability to embellish stories and thus could effect
revenue.

2\. If you need to goto some trust worthy organisation to fact check. Why do
you need to visit the publisher first?

~~~
ternaryoperator
It's part of the "fake news" nihilism. You attack everything and anything that
can limit the scope of the deceit you're creating.

------
bmpafa
I regularly read Breitbart and Alex Jones (the ideological yangs to my yin),
and they are apoplectic about this push towards fact checking.

It's unsettling how readily their audience accepts their claims that snopes et
al are liberal rags. I've done some due diligence in the past on snopes, and
afaik any bias is well within the margin of error from zero.

The narrative is that fact checking is a "globalist"-orchestrated move to
suppress what they call the "independent media" in favor of the "MSM"
(mainstream media).

I argue that whenever someone spends more time defaming their critics than
defending their stances and claims, readers ought to run away. But following
these news sources, it seems like most readers are completely trapped in an
unfalsifiable narrative. It's really disheartening to think that our current
best weapon against this sort of charlatinism is screening content thru fact-
checkers. But I do think these platforms are obligated here, and indeed long
overdue.

Tom Friedman makes a compelling argument about platforms' responsibilities
here: 'Facebook et al want the NYT readership, the NYT page views, but none of
the NYT overhead that comes with being accountable for the information they
share. And that's bullshit.'

------
rplst8
How does the saying go? The victors write the history books - the rest is just
fake news.

