#Fact-checking the fact-checkers: ‘Pants on Fire’ partisans

Snopes.com describes itself as the “definitive fact-checking site,” yet turns out to be a big source of misinformation: Its cofounder has written dozens of plagiarized pieces — many of them attacks on Republican politicos.

It’s just the latest example of “fact-checking” serving as a cover for partisan, left-wing opinion.

A BuzzFeed investigation found that Snopes’ David Mikkelson has “been lying to the site’s tens of millions of readers.” Snopes, which has served as a Facebook fact-checker, confirmed that Mikkelson published at least 54 plagiarized articles under various bylines.

His fake alter-ego, Jeff Zarronandia, claimed to be a Pulitzer Prize winner and had bylines “on at least 23 Snopes articles on topics like Donald Trump’s financial woes and false rumors about Hillary Clinton.”

Snopes has suspended Mikkelson from editorial duties pending “a comprehensive internal investigation.” But he’s still a company officer and 50 percent shareholder.

And Snopes has other problems. A Thursday piece complained, “Facebook Fails To Stem COVID Denialism Even as Delta Variant Surges,” and insisted that a post “misleadingly claimed: ‘Delta is a distraction! Get your eyes back on the border!’ . . . undermined the severity of the Delta variant surge.” That’s a fact check, for someone to suggest one news story is worth more attention than another?

Other “fact-checkers” play propagandist, too: PolitiFact, an actual Pulitzer Prize winner, this week rated “False” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s statement that there is “clear, legal authority” for arrest of those fugitive Texas lawmakers — when the state’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that they could be arrested. The site claims, “While the language uses the word ‘arrest,’ there’s uncertainty about how this term is to be interpreted.” What does that even mean? Cruz was clearly right; PolitiFact was just mad about it.

This kind of bias is nothing new. Back in 2011, Mark Hemingway noted in The Weekly Standard that “the media seem oblivious to the distinction between verifying facts and passing judgment on opinions they personally find disagreeable.” He cited a university study that found of the 98 statements PolitiFact rated false in a year, 74 were made by Republicans.

Ten years later, media continue to tout PolitiFact, Snopes and countless other “fact-checkers” as gospel. Will Snopes’ downfall teach them a lesson they’ve failed to learn over a decade? We rate that “Unlikely.”