For my own personal anecdote I don't trust NPR after listening to their boosting/washing of coups in Venezuela and Bolivia. NPR really seems like a sneaky operation to convince "nice people" that all countries the US doesn't like deserve to fall. Just speak in a gentle voice about the purposeful destruction of a society and you'll get people on your side I guess.

I've also noticed that even fact-checking is being weaponized for political reasons. A lot of the time it seems like only one side of the debate is fact checked, and only truly ridiculous claims against the other are debunked.

> I've also noticed that even fact-checking is being weaponized for political reasons. A lot of the time it seems like only one side of the debate is fact checked, and only truly ridiculous claims against the other are debunked.

That could be because the fact checkers are biased, or it could be that one side pushes falsehoods more frequently or more strongly than the other.

This sounds good in the abstract but then you have really flagrant things like this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-biden-no-empathy/

How is this a "mixture"? It's a cut-and-dry literal quote that the context does not change in any way.

I feel sad about Snopes, which used to be about exploring urban legends. It had a good sense of humour; it was delightful. I spent countless hours exploring it.

From my recollection, it previously had no explicitly political content (unfortunately, it has been blocked from the Wayback Machine).

I don't have any interest in what I see on the current version of snopes, which I guess must be following some money.

"Claim: Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden once said he had "no empathy" for the plight of younger people."

"What's True: In January 2018, Biden did say he had "no empathy" for the plight of younger people."

"Rating: Mixed"

Wow. What on earth were they thinking when they put this together?

> Wow. What on earth were they thinking when they put this together?

Probably that words taken out of context can mean something different than when they're taken in context.

I think more lines need to be drawn here. The claim is "did he say it" and the answer is "yes".

If they wanted to fact check whether "Biden said he didn't care about young people in a disparaging way", that would be fine, but it also is just a moral judgement.

The actual problem here is that Snopes doesn't apply this standard evenly. For a democrat, it "requires context", for a republican, it's just "100% true".

> I think more lines need to be drawn here. The claim is "did he say it" and the answer is "yes".

> If they wanted to fact check whether "Biden said he didn't care about young people in a disparaging way", that would be fine, but it also is just a moral judgement.

But the literal claim "did he utter these words" is practically meaningless. By that standard, if you once said "I don't understand people who think the movie Battlefield Earth is great, it's a waste of time." I could say "tjs8rj said 'the movie Battlefield Earth is great,'" or "tjs8rj said 'I don't understand people,'" and you'd have to fact check that as a "yes," even though I inverted your meaning. What people really care about is what's was meant.

> The actual problem here is that Snopes doesn't apply this standard evenly. For a democrat, it "requires context", for a republican, it's just "100% true".

I'm not convinced that's actually the case.

Yeah that's embarrassing. They would have had better luck with "old men are assholes; film at 11!" Biden didn't say anything that we wouldn't expect to hear from 95% of men in their late 70s. The immediately preceding geriatric president was also considered something of an asshole.

They're answering the question: "Did U.S. Presidential Candidate Joe Biden Say He Had ‘No Empathy’ for the Plight of Younger People?"

I mean, as far as I've seen, Joe Biden never said the words "no empathy" anywhere near the word "plight", so I guess the extremely literal cut-and-dry answer to the question is no.

Yet, as you say, he did pretty much say that, but there is room for context, which the article does a pretty good job of presenting. People deserve to know the context and then judge the comment for themselves.

Can I get a fact check on whether ahelwer said "all countries the US doesn't like deserve to fall"? Is it true that you once said that (in this very comment section, no less)? It is true, and it isn't true; a mixture.

I mean I’d agree with that rationale iff it was applied consistently. Unfortunately it isn’t. According to Snopes, the sheriff saying the serial-killer in Georgia “had a bad day” is true.[1]

Maybe I’m missing something but it seems like the exact same thing.

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bad-day-atlanta-shooting/

Yeah. It seems both should be labeled the same.

This slimy, esoteric parsing of politician's words is indistinguishable from what you see from Trump supporters. Just take the L and move on. Trying to convince people they didn't hear what they understand they heard is how you lose trust, which might matter for something important - and is the entire point of this whole comment thread.

It would be interesting if a fact checker made an algorithmic method of deciding which facts to check. Would be a way of eliminating accusations of selection bias.

> I've also noticed that even fact-checking is being weaponized for political reasons.

I don't think fact-checking exists for any other reason. People like fact-checking that confirms their beliefs.

Even if objectivity is possible in fact-checking, objectivity is not going to build your audience, nor find you clients.

Of equal importance is reading the actual citations. Sometimes the short conclusion is misleading of the quantity of evidence that goes the other direction.

NPR are a bit dangerous in some ways, because their reputation for being trustworthy (on most topics anyway) means that a lot of people take all of their reporting at face value, rather than applying some critical thinking or cross-checking what they read. Yet NPR do have biases, and in recent years have engaged in the same sort of selective reporting and narrative-shaping as other outlets, just not quite so blatantly or to the same degree.

I can't remember if it was NPR or NYT that had the piece about "this % of the population believes false information about covid" and one of the items was that it came from bats. We weren't sure if it did or didn't come from bats. I don't know if we're sure now. But sure enough they slipped it in there with a bunch of goofy lies.

"experts", obviously. ;-)

I used to view NPR as a relatively unbiased source, but lost a great deal of respect for them (to the point that I now rarely listen) during Trump's presidency. I am not a Trump supporter in the slightest, but was appalled at their naked partiality.

I won't deny the clear partiality present in all media (anyone who claims to be fully impartial is wrong) but I personally did not notice any significant shift in the absolute position presented by NPR over the last few years.

Though, their apparent position relative to the Republican party seems to have changed drastically.

I agree but I think it’s evident that their bias began with their loss of public funding.

When the Taliban destroyed Bamiyan Buddhist statues in Afghanistan in March 2001, NPR started calling for blood and I realized how spot-on Noam Chomsky was when he said “In times of war, all media becomes state media.”

This was before 9/11 but that week I knew we would be going to war in Afghanistan because overnight the left-leaning pundits were speaking in solidarity with fox news talking points. This really disillusioned NPR for me, and I had been an avid listener for 10 years at that point.

I really only see superficial differences between the two sides of the media at this point.

What things in particular?

Experts.