While I rake MSM over the coals on a regular basis when they abuse their power, I equally give kudos when I read a truly fair and balanced story produced by them.
Daniel Victor in the New York Times wrote just such an article about the woes of Snopes.com, a popular site that gives thumbs up or down to the truthfulness of many stories.
If you clicked the link above and read that story, you now have a pretty good idea of what is going on. Basically an original founder is being shoved out of his own company. It's turning messy, as these things often do, because the founder pitches a hissy fit when he is asked to act responsibly with the money. Not all founders end up being pushed out of companies they start, but usually when it does happen it's because the founder does not have the skill set to handle new challenges of a growing company and still is playing loosey-goosey with the cash register.
Call me a contrarian, but I stopped listening to Snopes.com some years ago when I found that even their so-called unbiased and learned opinions weren't so unbiased and often were unlearned. Then I learned Facebook had chosen them as one of their verified fact checkers to determine if a story was real or not and the funeral was over.
I once contacted them via their website so I could interview them. They didn't get back to me. Obviously they will talk to the venerable Gray Lady, as the NYT is often called, but a Citizen Journalist? Oh, no; not one of their ilk. Not someone without properly authorized press credentials.
Who is Angela K. Durden that Snopes should deign to be interviewed by her? I've got a middle initial and everything, but does Snopes care? No, they do not.
So I went to whois.icann.org to find other contact information for Snopes and got this:
For a company that holds others to a high standard of clarity, Snopes.com hides.
Granted, there are plenty who do hide their physical presence and for good reasons, but Snopes should not be one of them.
The court case is forcing the inner workings of that company out in the open. When my friend, worried about losing an objective reporting site, read me the email he received wherein Snopes' founder asked for money to fight the big bad meanie, I said that founder was spinning his own story.
Seems my objective research proved me right. Oh, Snopes, Snopes, Snopes. Just go ahead and close your doors. You don't look good on life support.
Hmmmm...I wonder. If I share this post on Facebook, will it pass the Snopes verified smell test?
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