Snopes.com, FactCheck.org, and TruthOrFiction.com

I loved your article on “Snopes Exposed.” LOL! It corroborated an article I wrote on May 28, 2010. I show it below:

For those of you who put a lot of faith and trust in these organizations who tell you whether something is true or false, DON’T. I did some research and found out that Snopes.com is a husband and wife team, David and Barbara Mikkelson, who works out of their Agoura Hills, California, home. David Mikkelson started Snopes.com in 1995. In a Readers Digest article, it stated that David was staring at an inbox of over 21,000 unopened emails! There’s no way they can keep up with that kind of email traffic. David claims to be non-partisan, and Barbara is a Canadian citizen. They both claim to be apolitical. However, I find their responses to have a leftist bent and to be quite liberal. Some people take everything that Snopes.com says as the gospel truth. I highly doubt the veracity of their answers to questions from people writing to them.

In the most recent email that I had received and forwarded to some of you regarding Oklahoma’s Conservativism, TruthOrFiction.com stated that all of the five claims were true. TruthOrFiction.com was founded by Rich Buhler in 1999 somewhere in Southern California. I find TruthorFiction.com to display a conservative bent.

What is interesting is that FactCheck.org responded to that same Oklahoma’s Conservativism article. However, their answers nitpicked each of the items that TruthOrFiction.com claimed as true giving the impression that they were false or questionable. FactCheck.org was formed in 1994 by Walter Annenberg (liberal) at the University of Pennsylvania. I found FactCheck.org to be a very leftist, liberal organization that is riddled with liberals who respond to your questions.

Consequently, I do not maintain much faith in the answers from Snopes.com and FactCheck.org. I would rather do my own research and form my own conclusions and not depend on any of these organizations’ answers. If I were to lean towards any of the three above, I would be more prone to take the answers from TruthOrFiction.com as more credible than Snopes.com and FactCheck.org. However, don’t believe any of them until your own research leads you to come to your own conclusion. I personally would not seek answers from any of them.

Anymore, nowadays, it is becoming more and more difficult to ascertain what is true and what is false. People send me evaluations by Snopes.com and appear as though Snopes.com is the carrier of all truth. They are not. They have a hidden agenda, so don’t take their explanations as the end-all to any and all disagreements. What people should do is to send the same question to all three of these truth verifiers and validators (I created this word; PhDs can do that.) to see if all three return identical answers. If they do, then I may have some confidence in their answers. If they differ, I wouldn’t believe any of them. 

Always look with a jaundiced eye at everything that you are given–especially what you receive from these three self-declared purveyors of the truth. Remember, one person’s truth is another person’s lie. Just ask any Democrat and Republican in a debate with each other. Verification and validation must always rest upon your own shoulders. Do not assume as truth what others tell you. The truth sets you free.