by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | Dec 10, 2015
Finding the Truth
I have found Snopes very useful in the past, but always look at their conclusions with suspicion. Why? Because when I have first-hand detailed and technical knowledge on a topic, I have found their conclusions biased in supporting a particular position. At other times, I have taken the time to do a detailed analysis of a topic and again found that they have slanted the facts or omitted important information, or more often answered the wrong question (straw horse logical fallacy) to fit a presumably predetermined conclusion. However, I still use them for a quick look to see if there is some sort of potentially legitimate controversy that requires a second look.
One technique used to discredit the alternative media is to place partly false stories out on the web for everyone to pick up and repeat; thus providing Snopes and others an easy target in discrediting a vast swath of alternative media pundits. However, I believe that the alternative media are their own worst enemies, since too many lead with headlines designed to attract traffic to their site, rather than focus on a dispassionate spreading of the unvarnished truth. If we are truly searching for the truth, we must at all times be willing to gore our own sacred ox, in the pursuit thereof.
The danger of Snopes in my view is that too many use this one source as the final arbiter of truth. Once Snopes says something is true or false, then the user can comfortably turn off their brain. If only it was this easy! Farming out your brain to a prepackaged truth factory is not a good idea in my view. It would be nice to trust authority figures, but history has shown they are some of the best deceivers: see James Perloff’s excellent historical review here.
Wikipedia is a great place to go to find out what the official truth-narrative is: a good place to start, though much of the context cannot be trusted … can be omitted, slanted and contain factual errors. See what’s really cooking at Wikipedia: here. Wikipedia has some of the same monolithic bias issues as Snopes; but the motives seem designed to hide or sanitize information based on topic, not based on a singular overarching agenda as in much more focused Snopes. I use Wikipedia to gather up dates, times, names, places. It is a starting point, but we must always go beyond and search out source documents and view other opinions and fact-claims using the trivium method if we want a clear map of the terrain before us.
Like Snopes, I have found Wikipedia corrupted at times, but to a much lesser extent. Too many of us have an opinion and then go looking for the facts to support our opinion. A better approach would be to use something like the Trivium method in this specific order 1) Grammar: who, what, where and when; 2) Logic: why, without contradiction; & 3) Rhetoric: how to communicate to others.
Unfortunately the Trivium was removed from most education systems some 150 years ago and replaced by the Prussian system which teaches truth by authority and without context, thus our ability to think rationally and critically has been severely diminished and left many of us at the mercy of sites like Snopes.
For more on the Trivium, see John Taylor Gatto and Richard Grove on the Trivium.
- Trivium Study Guide
- Resources for the Trivium Method of Critical Thinking and Creative Problem Solving
- The Ultimate History Lesson
- And for fun… Snopes Got Snoped
Update:
SNOPES CAUGHT RELEASING FAKE “FACT-CHECK” IN DEFENCE OF DEMOCRATS (MARCH 3, 2017)