The Patriot Post® · Snopes Is 'Missing Context'

One of the worst creations of the modern mainstream media is the so-called “fact-checker.” We have repeatedly noted how these arms of the Leftmedia are little other than leftist opinion promoters dressed in the guise of self-appointed arbiters of truth. That might not be so bad except that they are also authoritative gatekeepers for Big Tech.

Ironically perhaps, these censorious journalistic jackboots are the answer to conservatives’ efforts to expose leftist bias across the mainstream media landscape. This army of “fact-checkers” includes the likes of PolitiFact, Lead Stories, FactCheck.org, NewsGuard, and Snopes — the latter being the subject of today’s lesson, which we’ll come back to after a little history.

Back in 1987, Brent Bozell founded the Media Research Center. The purpose of MRC was to serve as a media watchdog calling out the blatant leftist bias being pushed as objective journalism by the MSM. Later, the blog NewsBusters was created specifically to serve this purpose.

Eventually, the Left responded to MRC with conservative-turned-liberal David Brock creating Media Matters in 2004. The purpose of Media Matters was to act as a counter to MRC and the growing conservative media landscape. It didn’t take long for Leftmedia outlets to begin to treat Media Matters as an “objective” and “nonpartisan” source for journalism.

Media Matters sought to reinforce the lie that the MSM was not biased toward the Left. And out of this effort grew the “fact-checker” phenomenon. These supposedly objective, non-biased entities were painted as arbiters of truth, primarily of stories or claims made across social media.

Of course, the money sourcing the growing litany of these “fact-checker” outfits goes a long way to exposing the real motive for them, but ideologically they serve primarily as narrative reinforcement.

Now, back to Snopes, which demonstrated this in spades when it “fact-checked” a social media post from RNC Research. The post on X featured a 16-second video clip of Joe Biden with the caption, “BIDEN: ‘I love your ears.’”

BIDEN: “I love your ears” pic.twitter.com/6orEXcUwBs

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 19, 2023

Obviously, the RNC was having a little fun at the expense of Creepy Joe, who has a long history of rather bizarre behavior around young women and girls. Ask his daughter Ashley, whose diary recounts some of it.

Did Snopes ask Ashley for context? Nope.

That’s even though Snopes titled its fact-check with an apparently new feature: “Explainer.” Snopes used the moments immediately before and after the RNC video to explain that while the clip was accurate, it was being used by right-leaning media to smear Biden as “creepy.” Snopes then scolded that “any users who simply read these headlines but didn’t look further for context might not leave with the facts.”

No kidding. That’s been the reality of the MSM for as long as news media has published headlines — maybe especially ones that delve into politics.

Not only did this Snopes “explainer” not actually explain any real context, but a quick search of the Snopes site regarding the Leftmedia’s infamous lie about Donald Trump’s comments on the Charlottesville protests yields not a single “explainer.” How is that possible? Biden has repeatedly claimed that Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” statement that day was the main reason he decided to run for president.

Bias is exposed both by how the Leftmedia outlets and “fact-checkers” spin their reporting against conservatives and, often even more glaringly, by what they avoid reporting or “fact-checking” entirely. As commentator David Burge joked a few years back: “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.”

What Snopes is doing with this “explainer” feature is expanding its role of Leftmedia narrative reinforcer by going out of its way to protect the narrative from the facts or any context. In this instance, the RNC’s X post was indeed factual and its message was a justifiable insinuation given Biden’s history. The only party missing context was Snopes for failing to note any of Biden’s long history of creepy actions and comments toward children. That record went unexplained by Snopes on the way to smearing Republicans.