Who Would Believe a ‘Fact Checker’?

Does anyone still believe “fact-checkers”, any more?

Let me rephrase that… does anyone apart from the diminishing clique of numpties who still read mainstream media still believe “fact-checkers”, any more? Certainly not the British Medical Journal, which took issue when Facebook labelled one of its stories “false information”. It was, the BMJ said, another example of “serious concerns about the ‘fact checking’ being undertaken by third party providers on behalf of Facebook”.

Similarly, the highly-respected Cochrane Collaboration was shadowbanned by Facebook’s sister-site, Instagram, for supposed “false content”.

One of Facebook’s official “fact-checkers” is the amateur website, Snopes — which has a long history of bias and outright false claims.

It hasn’t got any better.

The left-wing, so-called “fact checking” site Snopes worked diligently to spin a story about Joe Biden wearing a construction hard hat backwards during a campaign stop, but the site failed so badly at running flack for Biden, it had to reverse its own ruling Saturday.

In a classic case of a staged photo-op gone wrong, Biden was photographed posing with construction workers in a bar in Wisconsin.

In the photo two hard hats can be seen. A blue one on the bar top and one perched atop Joe Biden’s head. The one on the bar top is clearly sitting with the front facing away from the camera because you can see no bill and the fitting tightener is seen facing the camera. The tightener knob is supposed to be worn behind the head so the wearer can adjust the fit of the hat to fit snugly on the head.

But the one on Joe’s head also has the tightener knob facing forward and laying across his forehead, so he is clearly wearing the hat backwards.

Fitting, as it does, the narrative of Biden in terminal cognitive decline, the photo soon lit up on social media. Enter, Snopes, attempting to run protection for Sleepy Joe.

In its original post on the photo, Snopes, though, tried to say that detractors slamming Biden for wearing the hat backwards were wrong.

The purported “misinformation checking” site concluded that Biden was not wearing the hat backwards.

“The photo is genuine. And it does look, at first glance, like Biden was wearing that hard hat backwards. But after comparing it to other photos and videos of the same event, we were forced to reach the opposite conclusion: The hat on Biden’s head was facing forward, bill to the front, not backward,” they wrote in their initial post in which they gave the “wearing backwards” claim a “false” rating.

Sure. If you believe that, you’d also likely believe the latest Pallywood claim that Israeli sniper bullets hit their targets still fully enclosed in their casings.

The bullshit was so obvious, and the backlash so hard, that even Snopes was forced to recant.

In the end, Snopes had to make an about face on its attempt to run cover for Joe Biden. By Saturday evening, the site had changed its rating from “false” to “true” and had to admit that Biden really was wearing the hat all kinds of wrong […]

This was a huge slap in the face to the so-called fact-checker. In their effort to come to the aid of Joe Biden, they made themselves look like fools.

Independent Journal Review

Which, when it comes to leftists trying to be cleverer-than-thou, is shooting fish in a barrel.

Television teams that write parodies of the news ought to follow the news.

That might seem self-evident, but it’s a piece of advice the hacks at “Saturday Night Live” want to follow if they’re going to avoid embarrassing themselves.

Judging by this weekend’s episode, they don’t — and the backlash has been brutal.

“SNL’s” rake-stepping moment came during the “Weekend Update” segment when host Colin Jost attempted to mock former President Donald Trump but ended up making a fool of himself […] when Jost accused Trump of making up an “interesting new term called ‘debank.’”

Somebody might want to hand him a copy of the dictionary.

“Debanking” is a strategy to force political opponents to come to heel by cutting off their access to the financial system. The Collins English Dictionary defines it as “to deprive (someone) of banking facilities.”

The Independent Journal Review

But, hey, just remember: they’re the left. They’re smarter than you: just ask them.

Just don’t ask them the meanings of all them fancy words.