[saturdaysaint]

I regard Snopes as sort of low rent but Ethics Alarms is a right-wing smear blog that seems to make comical attempts at portraying itself as a paragon of objectivity and educators in classical philosophy. At some point you have to choose your own curators.

[Someone1234]

Do you have any rebuttal to their specific criticism of Snopes? Seems like they make some interesting points that they're supporting using facts and Snope's own quotes.

All you've done above is attacked the messenger and overlooked the message.

[Bartweiss]

Yes, their criticism of Snopes is misleading and dishonest.

There are several lengthy replies further down, but basically:

Ethics Alert quotes two small sections of a pages-long Snopes pieces, then acts like Snopes wrote nothing else. They claim that Snopes didn't answer the original question while hiding the actual image being analyzed (which Snopes addressed pretty directly). They draw specious conclusions (like equating a temporary 'not guilty' plea with calling the plaintiff a liar). They reveal facts already included by Snopes with the implication that they're unveiling a dirty secret, and without acknowledging that Snopes addressed those topics (in particular, the "Hillary laughed" bit).

They use quotes and facts, but their citations of Snopes are so selective, and use such fragile language breakdowns, that the content they're "responding" to has basically nothing in common with what was actually posted.

[mod]

I did not read the entire piece, but I think that you can read the snopes article without the related piece and see that they do not rate the claim (about Hillary defending a rapist) properly.

The claim, as stated, is true.

Snopes then goes on to defend the implications of the statement--implications that Snopes interprets.

I'm not sure an organization that deals in facts should be interpreting the tone/meaning/intended result of claims that it checks.

I would have liked Snopes to rate the claim true, and then provide details about the case. Readers can then decide for themselves how to think about those details.

Someone out there needs to deal strictly in facts and not the implications, greater meanings, or feelings related to those facts.

"Claim is true. X happened, Y happened, Z happened. Here are sources. Here's what people involved said."

[pwinnski]

I'm not sure how you can read the snopes article and believe that the claim is true.

http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-lau...

What is "the claim, as stated," that you believe is true? If it's the page title, "Hillary Clinton Freed Child Rapist," that is not true, as detailed in the explanation. The man was convicted, not freed. If it's the image (which is clearly what Snopes is rating), I count eight statements, seven of which involve Hillary Clinton. The first three of those seven are false, the fourth is technically true with false implications based on one of the earlier falsehoods, and the fifth is debatable, depending on what what "it" means in that context. The final two are demonstrably false, inasmuch as they purport to be factual statements.

So seven statements, five of which are definitely false, and two of which are arguably true in misleading ways.

I'd say "MOSTLY FALSE" sounds about right. How would one word the claim to come up with "true?"

[mod]

The first line of the article is this:

"CLAIM: Hillary Clinton successfully defended an accused child rapist and later laughed about the case."

That was the claim I referenced.

[nl]

It's pretty clearly a politically motivated attack on Snopes. Both examples were claims about things regarding Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party which Snopes said were wrong.

The Snopes arguments seem rather convincing to me. The first example was a specific claim based on a meme that went around of Facebook: "Hillary Clinton successfully defended an accused child rapist and later laughed about the case."

Snopes said: Yes, she defended the rapist. However, she was appointed by the judge, and the prosecutor on the case backs up Clinton's claim that she didn't want to take the case. There is a tape of her talking about the case, and she does laugh, but to quote Snopes: "When she audibly laughed, she was not laughing about the outcome of the case, but rather about how the case had forever destroyed her faith in polygraph tests because the defendant had taken one and passed (while, presumably, answering questions in a manner Clinton knew or assumed to be false)"

Snopes says it is "Mostly False". I think that is a reasonable assessment based on the evidence available.

I'm not going to summarize the other case at all - I don't think it is worth the time.

[mod]

I only read as far as you talk about, so I don't know what the rest of the detail is, but I tend to agree with the criticism of snopes, at least this far:

The claim, as stated, is 100% true.

The rest of Snopes' argument seems to be justification on behalf of Hillary, which in Snopes' defense, changes the light in which the statement paints Hillary.

If I were snopes, I would have rated the claim true, and then still explained the circumstances. I think that removes the bias and lets readers draw their own conclusion about why something happened. That's what's supposed to be going on at a fact-checking outfit.

[soundwave106]

Here's the original article: http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-lau...

I would say that "mostly false" is fine, based on the photo. This is based on the concluding statement: "Hilary is an advocate for rapists" etc.

Now, we all know that defense attorney for rapists != advocate for rapists. Ethics Watch admitted as much. However, they seemed to leave out the conclusion, which really was the whole point of the photo. To me, the conclusion should be given much greater weight in driving the rating.

Yes, the beginning of the photo is mostly true, but if the photo's post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacious conclusion is the real point, it doesn't matter. If I create a photo saying "Johnny listens to (insert current moral panic music here), Johnny grew up to be a criminal. Therefore, (moral panic music) makes you a criminal", that would be just as false... even if the first two statements are correct.

[mod]

I hadn't seen the meme.

Based on the meme, I would say "mostly true." I would take issue with "volunteered," I would question what she laughed about (it's unclear, and so not very fact-check-able), and I would ignore the "advocate for rapists, not women & children" bit as it doesn't seem to be a fact I can check. I would just say as much in my presentation of the facts.

Perhaps Snopes would have been better served by not wording the "claim" headline in a way that was expressly true, before then saying it was false.

They could have taken the meme line for line and rated them individually, as well. That happens anyway in the supporting detail, and it's an easy way to organize the page.

[nl]

I listed every claim made in the meme and attempted to rate it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12219011

The "claim" has to be written in a way people will be able to find it when searching for the meme. I agree it isn't a good summary of what the meme claims.

[Daishiman]

But that's assuming that readers go there to get only the fact without the accompanying context that is the real kernel of the issue. People don't go and check whether the fact iself, uncontextualized, is true; they want to see if Hillary really was the asshat that you would infer to be based on the stated line.

Snopes does it correctly; they say that the fact is true but it is evidently not the cause of the outrage that the original statement tries to create in the readers.

[mod]

If you're correct, then Snopes starts dealing in non-facts. Suddenly they have to say "this meme infers Hillary is an asshat." That's not verifiable in any way. It's a feeling you have based on your (widely-shared!) views. I think fact-checkers should deal in facts.

Snopes does not rate the claim true, and that's really all I'm taking issue with. I'd like them to rate it for truthiness and then give some evidence and context. No need for them to guess at what the author was inferring.

[hsod]

> People don't go and check whether the fact iself, uncontextualized, is true

This used to be exactly what I went to Snopes for. There's a million places online where people interpret facts and tell you whether or not they should be a cause of outrage.

Context in the article is good, but the top level "True/Mostly True ..." classification felt sacred to me. This one seems like a clear "Mostly True"

[Turing_Machine]

"It's pretty clearly a politically motivated attack on Snopes. "

Maybe if Snopes doesn't want to face politically-motivated attacks they shouldn't pursue a political agenda?

[st3v3r]

Are we no longer allowed to use our own experiences when evaluating new information anymore? If a news source has consistently acted in such a manner, are we not able to use our past experiences with them to shape our opinions of their reporting?

[saturdaysaint]

I have plenty of rebuttals, but scan Ethics Watch for 30 seconds and tell me it's even worth my time spelling them out.

[Turing_Machine]

They may or may not be a "right-wing smear blog", but I don't see how that is relevant to this case in particular.

Are their assertions about Snopes mischaracterizing the facts in this case correct or not?

[duaneb]

Did you read the article? this is clearly a Clinton smear job using snopes as a vehicle. At best it splits hairs; at worst it makes her out to be an amoral Machiavellian who doesn't care about child rapists. I can't think of a more obvious conflict of interest here with the right wing politics at play on the blog.

I'm personally ok with snopes as a whole even if their characterization is "mostly false" instead of "half false".

Yes, Clinton laughed at aspects of the case, not the case itself. Yes, she defended him, but a plea deal is a far cry from success for the child rapist, it's success on her part.

All the stuff they complain about in the snopes article can be inverted to complain about this article--they took the most damning possible interpretation of the events even if it's clear they're only proving the literal phrase is 100% correct without touching what it implies.

Actually, on further thought, this gives me more confidence in snopes's ability to tease apart delicate political topics. I would be truly interested in hearing what aspects of the blog post people found convincing.

[Turing_Machine]

"this is clearly a Clinton smear job using snopes as a vehicle."

Which statements in particular are incorrect?

On the contrary, from what I read they go out of their way to note that criminal defendants have the right to a vigorous defense, and that there was nothing unethical about Hillary providing one.

"Now, as I explained here, there was nothing wrong, unethical or hypocritical about Clinton’s work in this case. Her laughter in the interview is a little unsettling, but Hillary’s laughter is often unsettling. She did her job as a defense lawyer. The accusation that what she did was unethical is ignorant..."

They are objecting to the Snopes spin, not the actions of Clinton herself.

Edit to include the salient point:

The original assertion was that "Hillary Clinton successfully defended an accused child rapist and later laughed about the case".

Snopes rates this "mostly false", when it appears to actually be 100% true.

[Goronmon]

The issue of bias comes into play when it comes to the implied meaning behind the statements being reviewed.

"Hillary Clinton successfully defended an accused child rapist and later laughed about the case"

Statements like this are used when people are trying to criticize Clinton. They are used as evidence that she is a despicable human being, because what kind of person not only defends child rapists, but laughs about it? And I think Snopes is basically responding to the implied meaning.

Is it the job of places like Snopes to only review the literal interpretation of statements being reviewed, or is their job to provide more insight and context into the matter as a whole?

[Turing_Machine]

"Statements like this are used when people are trying to criticize Clinton."

Yes, absolutely. I would go even further and say that they're trying to smear Hillary Clinton, just as the rash of "Peter Thiel: Billionaire Vampire" stories we've seen in the past couple of days are trying to smear Thiel. Clinton apparently did defend a child rapist and later laugh about the case. Thiel apparently is interested in substances found the blood of young people. The objectionable behavior lies in a) not explaining that all criminals (even accused child rapists) have the right to defend themselves in court and b) not explaining that many existing treatments are derived from human blood. However, the base statement is true in both cases.

"Is it the job of places like Snopes to only review the literal interpretation of statements being reviewed,"

It is the job of places like Snopes to not mark things that are true as false.

If they wanted to introduce a "spun" category, I would certainly have no objection to that.

[mod]

> Is it the job of places like Snopes to only review the literal interpretation of statements being reviewed, or is their job to provide more insight and context into the matter as a whole?

Both!

Rate the claim literally. As a fact-checker, it's not your job to wonder what someone is implying.

Then provide more insight and context. Let readers make their own decisions about hidden meanings.

[duaneb]

Literally rating the claim is worthless, though. If all people were wondering about was whether Clinton defended a sexual predator as a lawyer and whether Clinton laughed at any aspect of that it wouldn't be worth putting on snopes in the first place.

If anything, you've argued that snopes overstepped their bounds by covering it at ALL if their job is to cover literal claims. The only reason the claim is interesting is because of context and implication.

Snopes should REALLY evaluate who's on first; I think we all agree that's a good use of their time.

[isleyaardvark]

Is there a serious question to what the original claim was implying?

If sites like Snopes only based their ratings on the literal meanings, that would create a huge loophole for any number of dishonest techniques, and obvious cases of lying by omission and quote-mining would end up with a giant "True" label.

[duaneb]

I already addressed these claims in my original comment. The claim may be 100% true on a very literal level: Clinton defended him for some definition of success (her success, not his), and laughed at the case for some definition of laughing at a large span of time (laughed at some specific aspects of some specific events).

To me, the article used the technical accuracy to paint her as a person who had zero issues defending a sexual predator on a personal level with a lacadaisical attitude. This can't be further from the truth: she was ethically obligated to give a good defense. That she was able to find some humor is just human and arguably necessary for a job defending morally repugnant people.

If the value of the blog is its ability to be utterly pedantic about language while ignoring context, implication, and personal bias, perhaps they should re evaluate their brand as an ethics watchdog.

[nl]

Well, she didn't win the case, and the laughter was at how she would never trust a polygraph again.

But the accused wasn't convicted of rape, and that polygraph was to do with the case.

There is both truth and false there. If you look at the original meme it is pretty clear there is more false than true:

She didn't volunteer to defend the rapist (FALSE)

She didn't make up a story that the woman enjoyed the rape, although she did ask for the woman to be assessed by a psychologist. (MOSTLY FALSE)

He served jail time, but he was freed, and it was after a plea-bargain (EVEN, but I'd tend towards more false than true here)

She did seem to know he was guilty (TRUE)

She didn't laugh about him being guilty (Note the phrasing in the meme is "she knew he was guilty. And she laughed about it") (FALSE)

So one true statement, one even, one mostly false and two false statements.

I'd say "Mostly False" is fair overall.

[rootusrootus]

Is a plea bargain a successful defense? Only if you are really guilty. If you got bullied into taking the plea, it's an utter failure. Depending on how you weight the two parts of the assertion, it isn't unreasonable to call it mostly false.

[st3v3r]

"Snopes rates this "mostly false", when it appears to actually be 100% true."

Only if one ignores every single bit of context.

[mod]

> without touching what it implies.

The thing is, Snopes is in the business of facts, not implications.

At least, I think they should be. I go there for fact checking, not for implication checking. I can make my own assumptions about implications. Implication is not rooted in fact.

[duaneb]

Implications are just as real as facts--that is, not at all. The world runs on implications. This is what advertising is. We expect to be lied to daily.

[bicknergseng]

It appears some of their assertions are correct, if the response disproportional. The inability to see gray area is typically a large part of the problem in a lot of political discussions, and the blogosphere is always the worst when it comes to painting something nuanced as black or white.

I have no idea why I'm responding to this.

[iainmerrick]

Thanks for responding anyway! I started to reply myself but couldn't figure out a way to phrase it without either resorting to hectoring, or getting dragged into the kind of legalistic, "rational" tarpit that's really the underlying problem. Your point is spot on.

[chc]

I don't know if they're a right-wing smear blog or what, but their assertions range from "wrong" to "pointlessly nit-picky," and never appear to build much of a case against Snopes. Briefly:

1. They accuse Snopes of "moving the goalposts" and "attacking straw men" by only quoting Snopes' summary of the text Snopes is responding to, and not the text in the image itself. The Snopes article includes both, so while the summary is perfunctory, it's clear where Snopes got the claims it was refuting.

2. The original claim says: "Hillary got my rapist freed. In 1980 she gave an interview where she admitted she knew he was guilty. And she laughed about it." Snopes interprets this as suggesting that Hillary laughed about the fact that she knowingly got a guilty rapist off, and their debunking is based around this interpretation. Ethics Alarms objects to Snopes' rebuttal on the grounds that Hillary laughed at some point in the interview, which seems to me to miss the point that the original image was trying to make.

3. The last point they take issue with is whether Hillary accused the girl of making it up because she enjoyed fantasizing about older men. Snopes' explanation is that this claim comes from an affidavit where Hillary merely asked for permission from the court to examine whether this might be the case, and that not to follow this avenue of inquiry after her client suggested it would have been failing to do her job. Ethics Alarms objects that by pleading "not guilty," Hillary made this accusation. Ethics Alarms then goes on to agree that Hillary acted responsibly here, so I don't even know why they're attacking Snopes on this.

[mcphage]

The issue is where the statements are no longer mere facts. Like "successfully defended". Snopes claims that is false, because the client wasn't freed, Ethics Watch claims it is true because the client got a plea bargain. Which is it? Well, it could be interpreted either way.

Take Clinton's laughter—the claim is "Clinton laughed about the case". Does that mean that "she laughed about the results", or "she laughed when discussing the case"? Which ever they discuss, people will criticize them using the other metric.

Of course, both of these have the same problem: there's a claim, which can be interpreted 2 ways. Snopes defends the one they felt is meant, and this site criticizes them for the other. On its own, whatever. But these are interesting that, while Ethics Alert's interpretations may be valid, they're a lot less emotionally weaker. Take the laughter:

- If Clinton had laughed about getting a rapist off, that would be bad.

- She did laugh when discussing the case, and so that can be seen as "laughing about the case".

- But "laughing about the case" isn't really bad. Nobody cares if she's discussing the case, and laughs about something. It's meaningless. But they do care about laughing about getting a rapist off.

You see? These both have a similar bait-and-switch:

- Claim: Something that people care about.

- Snopes: That something didn't happen.

- Ethics Alert: Something can also be interpreted this other way, which did happen. But the other way nowhere near as significant.

So can you interpret "successfully defended" as "got a plea bargain". But if you try and substitute them both back into the original claim, one of them is really bad, and one of them isn't nearly so:

- "Clinton freed a child rapist".

- "Clinton got a child rapist a plea bargain".

Suddenly it's like, so what? Lots of cases get plea bargains, for lots of reasons. Maybe the facts of the case are open to dispute, maybe the prosecutors don't have a strong case, maybe there was some procedural mistake. That's not a very strong criticism.

Also, they accuse Snopes of responding to statements that aren't directly in the claim. Is that good, or bad? Well, if they do, then they're susceptible to attacks like this. If they don't, then they get to hear an endless litany of "no no when they say X it means Y and why didn't you address that point what are you trying to hide"? It's a no-win.

As for the flags one, I don't know. And honestly, I don't particularly care. There was no shortage of patriotism on display at the DNC, that playing games about which days had flags and which days didn't and which days had the attendees make giant flags in their seats is childish. If they have the pictures mis-dated, then definitely they should be fixed—but this looks like a similar problem to the above, where critics use "They didn't show enough flags!" as a substitute for "The DNC was unpatriotic!", and while you might think they didn't use enough flags, there was no shortage of patriotic attitudes on display.

[Bartweiss]

The Ethics Alert assertions are badly wrong. They've actually mischaracterized Snopes far worse than Snopes mischaracterized the case.

Their statements aren't wrong just because they're a smear blog, but their smear blog status should prime you to expect horribly inaccurate claims.

Snopes uses a four-part breakdown for their claims. Ethics Alert took two parts, misrepresented them, then blasted Snopes for inaccuracy and incompleteness (while, mind you, ignoring the bulk of the article).

Snopes includes:

- An example of the claim "in the wild"; in this case, a picture with text.

- A simple 'Claim' section, stating the core assertions shared by most of the 'wild' examples in easy to read/search text.

- An assessment, giving a conclusion and basic propositions about what was true and false.

- An analysis, giving sources and reasons for the decision.

Ethics Alert quotes parts two (claim) and three (assessment) then tears into them for incompleteness and mismatch.

They open by saying that the assessment doesn't match the claim, and that the claim is "100% true". The assessment doesn't match the written claim, it matches the specific statements from the "wild" example. By failing to mention or reproduce that example, Ethics Alert hides the entire focus of Snopes' analysis to make them easier to attack.

E.A. then says "Then Snopes tries equivocation, saying that Clinton didn’t laugh about the outcome of the case. I see: she laughed (three times!) while talking about the case, but wasn’t laughing about the case’s outcome, just…the case. Ridiculous."

We're expected to accept that there's no meaningful difference between "about the case" and "about the outcome of the case". That's what's ridiculous - what they call equivocation, I call a crucial difference. If a man breaks into a murder trial wearing a rubber chicken on his head, I'm not going to claim that everyone telling the story is laughing about murder. Clinton laughed about how inaccurate polygraphs are, and we're being told to treat that as laughing about rape. Ethics Alert also fails to mention that Snopes includes the tape with the laughter, acting as though it's a dirty secret Snopes hid from their readers.

(Incidentally, this is a sloppy, though common, use of 'equivocation'. Equivocation is "abusing multiple meanings", not "drawing petty distinctions".)

E.A. also blurs the line between legal actions and factual claims, saying "Similarly ridiculous is Snopes’ claim that Hillary 'did not assert that the complainant ‘made up the rape story.'' She pleaded not guilty."

That's a standard part of a legal proceeding for all kinds of reasons, and there isn't an honest lawyer alive if "entering a plea which doesn't match the result" counts as lying. Notably, Hillary didn't claim innocence, but took a plea bargain for her client. Pleading 'guilty' has legal consequences apart from whether one committed the action in question (like the loss of ability to seek a plea bargain), and pleading 'not guilty' encompasses claims like insufficient evidence to convict.

The E.A. article goes on at great length, wandering closer and further from reality. But all all points, it misrepresents Snopes, misrepresents the cases in question, and views clear, reasonable language with the most hostile interpretations it can find.

[st3v3r]

It is quite relevant, as everything they do is shaped through that past lens.

[skykooler]

Reminds me of http://xkcd.com/250