[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.

[mod]

I think that they can privately decide okay, this is worth rating because of implications.

In the presentation, though, I think the implications should be left out. You're a fact checker, and whatever implication you pull from a claim is not necessarily the same as what others pull.

Anyway, I don't want my fact-checkers pushing an agenda, or defeating an agenda, with anything except facts. Let me use facts to side with the truth!

Don't you agree that if you present the facts in the Hillary claim, the implication & agenda is defeated? Why undermine your own trustworthiness by rating the (literal) claim false?

[duaneb]

It honestly never occurred to me to rate the literal claim. That's what google and newspapers are for.

[mod]

That's weird. It's honestly never occurred to me to go to a newspaper for any "literal" claims about politics.

That's--well, that's what Snopes is for.

[duaneb]

What do you think the role of a newspaper is if not to report the news literally?

[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.