| 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. |