Fake News Review

In early October, a meme was circulated which asserted that over half of the players currently in the NFL are convicted felons. The meme appeared to be a response to the protests that have been going on. There was no indication where the statistics in the meme came from.

One of the Facebook pages where the meme was shared was Liberal Logic 101. The Liberal Logic slogan is, “Helping those of us with brains understand how Liberal Logic works.” The meme about felons in the NFL doesn’t seem to be by Liberal Logic. When Liberal Logic posted the meme about the NFL, most of the Facebook comments indicated that people found it preposterous.

Within a week after the meme began to circulate, Snopes posted an article thoroughly debunking the statistics used in the meme. I suspect that whoever created the meme didn’t like what’s going on in the NFL and found some data to support the idea that most of the players are criminals. The problem could be that he made up the meme without even differentiating between arrests and convictions or between felonies and misdemeanors.

Although there is a name at the top of the meme, there’s no obvious trail leading to the person who created the meme. Even that name could be fake. The meme defamed the NFL and the players. Whether you think players should stand up for the anthem or not, defamation – which is a fancy word for lying and bearing false witness – is wrong.

Points to ponder:

When someone tries to make a point with numbers, there should be some reference to where those numbers came from. If no legitimate source is cited, the numbers are very likely to be fake.
Another trick used by fabricators is making up legitimate sounding sources of information. One variation would be to refer to legitimate information sources even though no related information is there.
If the numbers seem too good, or too bad, to be true, they may well be.

Is Snopes a reliable source of information?

Many journalists and consumers of news have a high regard for Snopes. I occasionally refer to Snopes. Their posts are well-written and their writers seem to be digging into the topics they cover the way a good journalist would.

On the other hand, many people think Snopes leans to the political left most of the time and there does appear to be some evidence of that. This doesn’t mean that everything Snopes has ever done is tainted. It just means that some of it should be taken with a grain of salt, just like everything else that’s out there. Check out these articles for a dose of salt.

Snopes, Which Will Be Fact-Checking For Facebook, Employs Leftists Almost Exclusively Alex Pfeiffer and Peter Hasson, The Daily Caller

The Daily Mail Snopes Story And Fact Checking The Fact Checkers “How can fact checking organizations like Snopes expect the public to place trust in them if when they themselves are called into question, their response is that they can’t respond?” Kalev Leetaru, Forbes