They rate "Did AOC Exaggerate the Danger She Was in During Capitol Riot?" as FALSE.
They also included a puff piece editorialization in it:
> "AOC was targeted with another round of bad-faith smears after giving an emotional, firsthand account of her experiences during the Capitol riot."
"So the claim that they investigate is:
"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exaggerated the danger she was in during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, in that she "wasn't even in the Capitol building" when the rioting occurred."
Instead of rating it mostly true, or a mixture, they rate it mostly false, and then state:
"What's True: Ocasio-Cortez wasn't in the main Capitol building where the House and Senate Chambers are located."
Included in their "fact check" are the following politically-biased statements (emphasis added):
"It took less than 48 hours for the right-wing disinformation machine to contrive a way to minimize what Ocasio-Cortez said she had experienced."
"In a circus of cyberbullying that began on Feb. 3, 2021, conservative news outlets and social media conspiracy trolls latched on to the misleading claim that Ocasio-Cortez “wasn’t in the Capitol building” and therefore was not in harm’s way, as she had described in the Instagram video."
To its credit, Snopes' main argument is that AOC never claimed she was in the Capitol building, which is an important point, but one example of "mostly-false right-wing disinformation" is a Red State headline, “AOC Wasn’t Even in the Capitol Building During Her ‘Near Death’ Experience.” Obviously, that headline is mostly true, arguably entirely true.
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Here is another example, coming from the beginning of the Trump Admin. Here is their page on a comparison of the Obama and Trump inauguration crowds which was a popular talking point of late night TV show hosts:
It includes this well-known blurry picture comparison (a meme, no less), and you can't even tell if it is a reliable comparison, as you can't even tell if either presidents are on stage yet:
It's very easy to tell that Snopes used pictures of the crowd from different times to sell their narrative.
Multiple people had contacted Snopes a few times to point out the problems with their fact check, including links to these pictures. They never replied nor updated their narrative, despite it being a hot topic in the press for quite a while.
Truth and facts are becoming harder to come by these days. When you have to fact check the fact checkers, things are pretty bad.
And social media companies will use "fact checks" like these to make censorship decisions, so they aren't simply "alternative viewpoints" on the internet; they have real-world First Amendment implications."
These are examples I easily found by using duckduckgo. Google will hide these.
Not replying further as this discussion has turned into a snarky flame war which is frowned upon.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aoc-capitol-attack/
They rate "Did AOC Exaggerate the Danger She Was in During Capitol Riot?" as FALSE.
They also included a puff piece editorialization in it:
> "AOC was targeted with another round of bad-faith smears after giving an emotional, firsthand account of her experiences during the Capitol riot."
"So the claim that they investigate is:
"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exaggerated the danger she was in during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, in that she "wasn't even in the Capitol building" when the rioting occurred."
Instead of rating it mostly true, or a mixture, they rate it mostly false, and then state:
"What's True: Ocasio-Cortez wasn't in the main Capitol building where the House and Senate Chambers are located."
Included in their "fact check" are the following politically-biased statements (emphasis added):
"It took less than 48 hours for the right-wing disinformation machine to contrive a way to minimize what Ocasio-Cortez said she had experienced."
"In a circus of cyberbullying that began on Feb. 3, 2021, conservative news outlets and social media conspiracy trolls latched on to the misleading claim that Ocasio-Cortez “wasn’t in the Capitol building” and therefore was not in harm’s way, as she had described in the Instagram video."
To its credit, Snopes' main argument is that AOC never claimed she was in the Capitol building, which is an important point, but one example of "mostly-false right-wing disinformation" is a Red State headline, “AOC Wasn’t Even in the Capitol Building During Her ‘Near Death’ Experience.” Obviously, that headline is mostly true, arguably entirely true.
-----
Here is another example, coming from the beginning of the Trump Admin. Here is their page on a comparison of the Obama and Trump inauguration crowds which was a popular talking point of late night TV show hosts:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/01/20/obamas-inauguration-c...
It includes this well-known blurry picture comparison (a meme, no less), and you can't even tell if it is a reliable comparison, as you can't even tell if either presidents are on stage yet:
https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2017/01/a17.jpg
Now compare that to this:
Obama crowd, with Obama on stage:
https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/president-barack-obama-...
Trump crowd, with Trump on stage:
https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/president-donald-trump-...
Another angle matching similar to Obama's angle:
https://www.usmessageboard.com/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2F...
It's very easy to tell that Snopes used pictures of the crowd from different times to sell their narrative.
Multiple people had contacted Snopes a few times to point out the problems with their fact check, including links to these pictures. They never replied nor updated their narrative, despite it being a hot topic in the press for quite a while.
Truth and facts are becoming harder to come by these days. When you have to fact check the fact checkers, things are pretty bad.
And social media companies will use "fact checks" like these to make censorship decisions, so they aren't simply "alternative viewpoints" on the internet; they have real-world First Amendment implications."
These are examples I easily found by using duckduckgo. Google will hide these.
Not replying further as this discussion has turned into a snarky flame war which is frowned upon.