120
Snopes Posts an L (hexbear.net)
submitted 7 months ago by TankieTanuki@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

Independent urban legend tracking and fact-checking website Snopes took a huge amount of fire on Saturday after marking a true story about President Joe Biden wearing a hard hat backwards “false” — so much heat that eventually they reversed their own ruling and the story is now marked “true” on the site.

At issue was a photo of Joe Biden wearing a hard hat backwards, which went viral on the right leaning side of social media before garnering enough attention to warrant a Snopes check.

The photo, which shows Biden wearing hard hat backwards, was included in the Snopes article that first called the story false.

The first tweet used in the Snopes article was a zoomed in photo of Biden wearing a hard hat backwards.

The close-up was from a photo of Biden wearing a hard backwards that was shared by Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar.

They then also included a tweet which showed the same hat on a construction worker’s head facing the other direction.

Pointing out the bill of the hat, the Snopes article then accused the construction worker of being the one wearing the hard hat wrong, rather than that Biden wore the hardhat backwards as shown in the photos of him wearing it backwards.

“Do construction workers sometimes wear their hard hats backwards? Yes. But to do so, the internal suspension has to be reversed to fit correctly, which explains why, when Biden donned the hat with the brim forward, the nape strap ended up on his forehead,” the original article concluded.

One X user pointed out the logical flaw fairly succinctly. “So the nape strap determines if on correctly??” wrote X user Vapid Surplus. “Thx.”

There were many other reactions.

Eventually, Snopes responded to the feedback by reversing their ruling on the photos of Biden wearing a hard backwards to True.

The updated article contained an editor’s note, explaining the complete 180.

So ultimately, the fact-checkers ruled that the obviously backward hat was backward after all, and that the photo of Biden wearing a hard hat backwards was indeed a photo of Biden wearing a hard hat backwards. But only after some convincing.

https://archive.md/Abwsl

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Ram_The_Manparts@hexbear.net 41 points 7 months ago
[-] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 45 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

That is NOT poop running down the president's leg. Stop being mean! kitty-cri-screm

*spends four hours writing article on how it's not poop* maddened

Edit: Okay, it MIGHT be poop. sadness

this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
120 points (100.0% liked)

news

23409 readers
550 users here now

Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.

Rules:

-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --

-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --

-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --

-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --

-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--

-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--

-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --

-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS