Proof that Snopes and AP have no Business being being "Fact Checkers"

originally posted by: Asktheanimals

originally posted by: Kharron
a reply to: Asktheanimals
Associated Press is a non-for-profit unincorporated association of many companies world-wide, with no ownership.

AP 2017 Financials

A non-profit formed by for profit corporations.
This means they will be objective?
When all our major media is owned by 6 corporations?

Well, I'm sure some are for profit and some are non profit. But the leadership is transparent, the financials and the board decisions are as well. The audits are done by a an independent agency. Overall, they've been around for 160 or 170 years, I forget, and have remained above BS for all that time. I'm sure there have been scandals in the past and there have been bad employees, but overall they are considered clean by almost everyone.

I still say fact check them, which is what we've been doing here weekly. They've reported well on their fact checks so far. We'll see if they can keep up with our own fact checking.

originally posted by: rickymouse
I did some tests on the fact checkers in response to diseases and food chemistry and found that they just parrot a lot of flawed interpretations of research. They are not a good source of information. When half the stuff I checked was not correct because they did not look properly at the whole picture and accessed only evidence that backed their beliefs, I figured I would never use them as a reference even if their evidence showed the same as I was saying.

I showed my daughter some of their false conclusions when she was believing in fact checker. She does not use fact checker anymore at least when discussing things with me. I blew her fact checker conclusions right out of the world twice. They matched the evidence they chose, but the evidence was misapplied.

That's exactly what we need. I'll be re-posting the AP fact checks when they put them out (maybe weekly, maybe bi) so I hope you help us out and let's try to debunk what they say. We can do that with other news agencies too. It's important for all of us to more or less agree on who not to agree with.

originally posted by: Kharron


That's exactly what we need. I'll be re-posting the AP fact checks when they put them out (maybe weekly, maybe bi) so I hope you help us out and let's try to debunk what they say. We can do that with other news agencies too. It's important for all of us to more or less agree on who not to agree with.

It is important to educate every single human being on discernment between fact and fiction. But its not only about facts. Some focus on particular facts only in order to support a pre-defined agenda (for example focusing on black crime only. While black crimes are a fact, any website that ONLY covers black crime is propaganda, regardless of how factual their stories are).

The illusion of freedom is strong with you all. Freedom is the last thing TPTB want anyone to truly have. That is why you are trappped behind invisible walls. The truth won’t set you free. a reply to: Skyfloating

a reply to: Skyfloating

I think the reason this Orwellian "Ministry of Truth" Ops is being created is because TPTB underestimated the power of a free internet where information can be shared without filters.

Someone hasn't read 1984.

Is this because the facts they provide do not match your world view, so immediately they are not true???

originally posted by: Kharron
a reply to: Asktheanimals

What are you talking about?

Reuters is still Reuters and never got sold to AP. It is owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation to this day.

Thomson Reuters

Associated Press is a non-for-profit unincorporated association of many companies world-wide, with no ownership.

AP 2017 Financials

your wrong about rueters. fact check yourself next time, they are no longer owned by reuters though they are allowed to operate independent into of themselves for now, and keep the compan name, but now they serve others interests. if you trace associated press and the many companies that share OWNERSHIP you will find at the bottom of that rabbit hole that they are anything but independent and not for profit

In January 2018, the company announced acquisition agreement for 55% of ThomsonReuters Financial & Risk unit for $20 billion - source en.wikipedia.org...
also "n January 2018, Thomson Reuters announced it was divesting its financial and risk unit to US private equity firm, the Blackstone Group. Thomson Reuters will retain 45% of the divested unit, keep the Reuters brand and will continue to deliver Reuters news and editorial content to the new divested unit. The deal will fund the Reuters business for the next 30 years."
Governance
The Associated Press is governed by an elected board of directors.[53] Since April 2017, the chairman is Steven Swartz, president and CEO of Hearst Communications.

Board of Directors
Steven R. Swartz (Chairman) Hearst Corporation
Donna J. Barrett Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.
Richard A Boehne The E.W. Scripps Company
Elizabeth Brenner The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Journal Communications, Inc.
Robert Brown Swift Communications
William Stacey Cowles The Spokesman-Review
Cowles Publishing Co.
Kirk Davis GatehouseMedia, LLC
New Media Investment Group
Michael Golden The New York Times Company
Bill Hoffman Cox Media Group
Rob King ESPN
Terry J. Kroeger BH Media Group
The Omaha World-Herald
Isaac Lee Univision Communications, Inc.
Fusion
Robin McKinney Martin The Santa Fe New Mexican and The Taos News
Gracia C. Martore Gannett Co., Inc.
Jim M. Moroney III A. H. Belo Corporation
William O. Nutting The Ogden Newspapers Inc.
David M. Paxton Paxton Media Group
Patrick J. Talamantes The McClatchy Company
Paul C. Tash Times Publishing Company


I see a long list of Biased ownership here

originally posted by: Skyfloating

originally posted by: Kharron


That's exactly what we need. I'll be re-posting the AP fact checks when they put them out (maybe weekly, maybe bi) so I hope you help us out and let's try to debunk what they say. We can do that with other news agencies too. It's important for all of us to more or less agree on who not to agree with.

It is important to educate every single human being on discernment between fact and fiction. But its not only about facts. Some focus on particular facts only in order to support a pre-defined agenda (for example focusing on black crime only. While black crimes are a fact, any website that ONLY covers black crime is propaganda, regardless of how factual their stories are).

Completely agree. However, they seem to be focusing on what the President is saying, so he decides what is being fact checked. They've been doing 8 of his statements per week.

But let's say he stops misleading us and does less than 8 lies a week -- I'm sure they would not have enough material to make one article. But if he keeps it up, we'll have plenty to dissect ourselves and see who is more accurate, AP or the White House. If he does more than 8, they focus on the biggest ones, or the farthest from the truth ones.

I've only posted 2 weeks of fact checks from them so far, but no one has been able to debunk any yet (that doesn't mean we won't in any future ones). So they're 16 out of 16 so far; we'll see what the next one brings.

a reply to: AutisticEvo

Yeah, that is partially true, I've already looked all that up.

Reuters sold a portion of their business to Blackstone Group, and actually they didn't sell, it was a merger. The financial terminal part of the business merged with Blackstone. Reuters News was unaffected and remains independent. Compared to AP, though, Reuters IS corporate and always has been. AP is not. You can buy stock in Reuters Thomson still, just like you can buy stock in 21st Century Fox for FOX or Turner stock for CNN.

For being corporate, Reuters is still way, way above Fox and CNN when it comes to accuracy.

And yes, AP has a board of directors, all companies do, even if they are non profit. Someone has to run them. If you check the financial statement I posted, you'll see that list of directors posted in those financials. Here, I'll post it again:

AP 2017 Financials

If you go to the end, you'll see the board of directors listed and where they hail from. You'll notice there are no big company names in there, no Turner, no Murdoch, no Century Fox, no big money. SO they do have a board of directors but they are as independent as they've been for close to two centuries.

Yea you basically have to do some of your own research now. FOX, CNN and other mainstream were always obviously bias and minipulated.

The real revelation was when I noticed websites like Infowars.com was being bias and minipulating facts.

No organization is safe anymore because agendas are everywhere. You can't fully trust anyone. That's the frustrating truth.

I thought John Oliver's "last week tonight" was really solid in comedy news. However, they completely got their Venezuela episode wrong. Using nothing but MSN bias sources, and having John oliver present it as truth.

It sucks, nobody slightly popular is bulletproof.

What I want to know is......How the Heck and when did we start trusting all police reports as being accurate? Like people do with their own government trusting them far to much.

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
Remember when AP had a competitor named Reuters?
They bought them out (in the interest of truth I'm sure)
Snopes has become the go-to fact check site which is quite the accomplishment for 2 people working from home.
"Who wants the truth? It's over at Bob's house!"
The web has changed the entire paradigm of how we discern reality in all it's forms.
The beauty of books is they can't change their text once printed.
As a student of history this is why I collect old books, written close to the times described within.
You quickly find certain themes have been endlessly repeated while important facts are ignored.
Today's propaganda is mostly based on lies of omission.
I think each passing generation has been steered farther from reality and remolded to fit the whims of our technocratic rulers.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^what Asktheanimal said ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

originally posted by: Shminkee Pinkee
Is this because the facts they provide do not match your world view, so immediately they are not true???

That is how those snowflaky ones roll trying to maintain the totalitarian left's narrative at all costs.

I like to let what ever facts available stack up and sort them to negative and positive for the theory. I also try to find any that are related and that requires some diligence that many people don't seem to have. It does seem a lot of omission of key facts happen with the MSM spin miesters. Maybe for different reasons. But sometimes we have nefarious characters doing shady things that simply need some light shined on them. So that means the omissions are allowed to cause some chain reactions on how the public perceives the content that might be wrong.

There is a science to manipulating people, Political Science, and there are Universities who offer degrees that emphasize the subject for those seeking to be part of the gov.

originally posted by: rickymouse
I did some tests on the fact checkers in response to diseases and food chemistry and found that they just parrot a lot of flawed interpretations of research. They are not a good source of information. When half the stuff I checked was not correct because they did not look properly at the whole picture and accessed only evidence that backed their beliefs, I figured I would never use them as a reference even if their evidence showed the same as I was saying.

I showed my daughter some of their false conclusions when she was believing in fact checker. She does not use fact checker anymore at least when discussing things with me. I blew her fact checker conclusions right out of the world twice. They matched the evidence they chose, but the evidence was misapplied.

Well, and I hesitate to ask, what/how do you determine what is closest to the truth of things.

I do know that people parrot what they've been taught (they pay a lot for their educations after all) and what they've heard from so called 'authorities' (many self-proclaimed).

My own personal experience and knowledge is so terribly limited, so I need to base my transient opinions/believe on the work of people more qualified and experienced then I.

I start with these resources, take into account biases and funding and history and add it to historical information as i can find. Very reliable sources get specifics wrong on occasion, yet, to my mind that doesn't discredit their whole body of work.

I tend to take all internet sources with much salt - though much of what I find can be from reliable and credible people. Or the opposite case can be true as well.

Wikipedia needs to be added to the list of false fact checking mechanisms. Go visit any Wikipedia page that deals with anything not left oriented and you will find false information and false narratives made by the liberal shills who now run Wikipedia.

I have read numerous articles pointing out the fact that both companies regularly hire political activists for fact checkers. Meanwhile leftists continue to recite their tripe like it's gospel because it tends to fit there narrative. Imagine that...

Liberals trash FOX news constantly saying it's bias. Will wait for them to do the same here...
Tick...
Tock...

originally posted by:

Snopes makes stuff up.

Their made up stuff is used to censor and throttle legitimate independent reporting.

Yeah... I googled that claim...
Snopes said it was false.
So....

It's not complicated.

The truth is anything that confirms our prejudices.

A lie is anything that doesn't.

a reply to: FyreByrd

Most time I cannot totally discredit an interpretation of evidence. What I find most times is that Occam's Razor has cut the interpretation to fit consensus of the time. The problem is that consensus of the time is not always right. Then you have to make sure that the interpretation or the evidence actually applies to what they are trying to apply it to. And whether it is even relevant to conclude something in the first place. Even scientists and medical professionals bark up the wrong tree.

Take for instance the interpretation of something wrong made for your illness. It is an educated guess to find a treatment for symptoms you have. Did you tell the doctor all the symptoms being sick and unable to think? Does the doctor think it is the same thing he has seen a couple of others for recently? Does the doctor have medical records that show you have had a problem before that can cause that symptom, but the pains from the rupture you just got are in a different place than when you had kidney stones yet the doctor discounted the fact you were carrying a heavy generator over a pile of pipe?

I have seen a lot of misdiagnoses over my lifetime, when the doctors cannot find something, the people elect to go to Mayo clinic and they find the problem, the answer was far from the direction the doctors here were searching in but they would not refer the patient to Mayo's, they did not want to make them or our local hospitals look bad. Mayo's has one good policy, they start from scratch and do proper testing, they will use their own judgement of professionals there to see if they can find the problem. They do not automatically take the opinion of the disease or condition from other doctors who aren't helping the patient.

These examples are from real life events, I lost a sister to the local consensus, by the time she got to Mayo, they could not save her leg and that led to a bloodclot killing her later. If she would have went even three or four days earlier they could have saved her leg, she had an infection that the doctors here were not aware was resistant to meds, Mayo's checked right away but the damage had become to severe.

I can go on and on. It is not always the Doctors fault, in fact most times it is his concentrating on common conditions that caused him/her to look at it wrong. It often is luck that the patient gives the doctor some pertinent information after talking for twenty minutes with the doctor, but lately, if you see the doctor for ten minutes top you are lucky, during that time, specific questions are asked, the patient does not get to say... I cooked up some pork chops yesterday with mushroom soup and it tasted terrible, My taste buds must be effected...then the doctor might ask how old was that can of soup you put in, did you smell it? Lack of time is a big issue, people remember things after they are already out of the appointment.

Do you get what I am saying about consensus of the time interfering with things? Lack of communication and acting all business does not always lead to the right conclusions. Gut instinct should be considered in things and follow up research should be done when it is found something is possibly involved. Now the media and involved organizations just take the evidence and run with it, applying it without looking at the parameters. They have been scaring the heeby Geebies out of a lot of people over nothing. Caffeinated coffee was bad for you, now it adds years to some people's lives if they drink two or more cups a day.

It is mostly the prestigeous that twist evidence and the person who knows a little but not the whole story that misapplies the evidence and parrots it out.

originally posted by: Outlier13
Wikipedia needs to be added to the list of false fact checking mechanisms. Go visit any Wikipedia page that deals with anything not left oriented and you will find false information and false narratives made by the liberal shills who now run Wikipedia.

So you believe/trust that the left-leaning wiki-pages are accurate?