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.
Nicely put, thanks.