What is SNOPES?

[Rapier]

This was sent to me by a conservitive lady. Very interesting. The following has not been "verified" or "approved" by SNOPES.



THIS MAY SURPRISE YOU

snopes.com
For the past few years www.snopes.com has positioned
itself, or others have labeled it as the 'tell-all, final word' on any
comment, claim and e-mail..

But for several years people tried to find out who
exactly was behind snopes.com . Only recently did Wikipedia get to the
bottom of it - kind of makes you wonder what they were hiding. Well,
finally we know. It is run by a husband and wife team - that's right, no big
office of investigators and researchers, no team of lawyers.. It's just a
mom-and-pop operation that began as a hobby.

David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando
Valley of California started the web site about 13 years ago - and they have
no formal background or experience in investigative research. After a few
years it gained popularity believing it to be unbiased and neutral, but over
the past couple of years people started asking questions who was behind it
and did they have a selfish motivation? The reason for the questions - or
skepticisms - is a result of snopes.com claiming to have the bottom line
facts to certain questions or issues, when in fact, they have been proven
wrong. Also, there were criticisms the Mikkelsons were not really
investigating and getting to the 'true' bottom of various issues.

When I saw that Snopes had falsely claimed that Obama's
Birth Certificate had been properly validated, I realized something was
wrong with either their research and/or their credibility. It seems
something is seriously wrong with both.

Then a few months ago, when my State Farm agent Bud Gregg in
Mandeville hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big
splash across the Internet. Supposedly the Mikkelsons claim to have
researched this issue before posting their findings on snopes.com. In their
statement they claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg
into taking down the sign, when in fact nothing of the sort ever took place.

I personally contacted David Mikkelson (and he replied back
to me) thinking he would want to get to the bottom of this, and I gave him
Bud Gregg's contact phone numbers. Bud was going to give him phone numbers
to the big exec's at State Farm in Illinois who would have been willing to
speak with him about it.. He never called Bud. In fact, I learned from Bud
Gregg no one from snopes.com ever contacted anyone with State Farment
as the 'final factual word' on the issue as if
they did all their homework and got to the bottom of things. Not!

Then it has been learned the Mikkelsons are very Democrat
and extremely liberal. As we all now know from this presidential election,
liberals have a purpose agenda to discredit anything that appears to be
conservative. There has been much criticism lately over the Internet with
people pointing out the Mikkelsons liberalism revealing itself in their web
site findings.

Gee, what a shock!

So, I say this now to everyone who goes to www.snopes..com
to get what they think to be the bottom line facts: Proceed with caution.
Take what it says at face value and nothing more. Use it only to lead you to
their references where you can link to and read the sources for yourself.

Plus, you can always Google a subject and do the research
yourself. It now seems apparent that's all the Mikkelsons do. After all, I
can personally vouch from my own experience for their 'not' fully looking
into things.

[popplecop]

Thanks, very interesting read.

[Jack]

Interesting.
It should be noted that Wikipedia, an enormously useful site, allows anyone to write entries into their site - so, some research to confirm (or debunk) a Wikipedia entry is worthwhile.