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01/08/2017 / By JD Heyes
The political Left has collectively lost its mind since their anointed nominee, two-time presidential loser Hillary Clinton, was soundly vanquished by now President-elect Donald J. Trump.
The Leftist media has particularly gone insane, having invented a narrative to help explain Clinton’s loss: ‘Fake news.’
It couldn’t be that Clinton was just a low-energy candidate who could not connect with enough voters in enough states to give her the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the presidency; of course not. It had to be something else—fake news supplied to hundreds of news and information sites throughout the campaign by Russian propagandists, which, of course, turned out to be completely bunk.
Still, the ‘mainstream media’ is sticking to its phony narrative, and that includes Facebook, which has pledged to team up with a gaggle of “fact-checking” websites and news agencies that themselves have a dubious history regarding accuracy and bias. One of those partner sites is Snopes.com, whose co-owners are now involved in a bitter legal dispute and whose CEO is being accused of using company funds to hire hookers.
O0ps. Credibility alert.
Further, as reported by the UK’s Daily Mail, one of Snopes.com’s main contributors who is charged with ‘fact-checking’ is a former sex blogger who once called herself “Vice Vixen.”
That’s troubling for a number of reasons—not the least of which is that Snopes.com’s association with Facebook is liable to be extremely valuable, given the social media giant’s reach and influence.
Facebook’s partner sites are going to be trusted to fact-check whether news stories trending on the News Feed and throughout the social site are in fact reputable and real. The partners will be tasked with deciding whether stories are genuine or whether they ought to be marked as “disputed.”
In addition to Snopes.com, other partner sites include ABC News (which has had its own credibility issues, including faking crime scene coverage), The Associated Press, and other “fact-checking” sites like Politifact.com, which also has a well-established political bias.
Besides these obvious problems, the Daily Mail found that Snopes.com’s founders, former husband and wife David and Barbara Mikkelson, are now embroiled in a bitter legal dispute in the wake of their divorce.
While he has since remarried, the issue is his choice of bride: She was once a former escort and porn actress who is now a staff member on the Snopes.com ‘fact-checking’ team.
The former married couple have exchanged accusations of financial impropriety: Barbara claims her ex-husband has embezzled company funds and suggested that he is attempting a “boondoggle” to change tax arrangements; David, by comparison, is alleging that Barbara took millions from their joint account and bought property in Las Vegas with some of the proceeds.
The site was founded in 1995. The couple met in the early 1990s on a folklore-themed online message board, getting married before they established their website. Profiles of the site note that for a while before it was established, the couple were known as “The San Fernando Valley Folklore Society,” even using the name on letterheads though it did not really exist.
A Webby Awards profile that was published in October says it was “an entity dreamed up to help make the inquiries seem more legit.”
In 1997, David Mikkelson told the Los Angeles Times, “When I sent letters out to companies, I found I got a much better response with an official-looking organization’s stationary”—meaning the “fact-checker” was posing as someone he wasn’t.
The couple divorced in 2015, but a bitter legal dispute has been ongoing. Both of them remained as co-owners of Snopes.com, registered under the legal name of Bardav, Inc., with the couple as the company’s only board members.
In legal filings that were reviewed by the Daily Mail, there are details showing a long financial and corporate dispute that has continued since the couple divorced, which one attorney has described as “contentious” in court documents. In the filings Barbara, 57, is accusing her former husband, 56, of “raiding the corporate business Bardav bank account” for his personal use and attorney fees, and without any consultation with her.
In addition, she accuses David of embezzling $98,000 from the company over the course of four years, “which he expended upon himself and the prostitutes he hired.”
When the Daily Mail contacted David, he told the paper he was not legally permitted to discuss his ex-wife’s allegations. “I’d love to respond, but unfortunately the terms of a binding settlement agreement preclude me from publicly discussing the details of our divorce.”
Barbara simply said, “No comment.”
In court papers, Barbara alleges that David took thousands of dollars from their business account between April and June of 2016 to pay for trips for him and a “girlfriend.” She said he spent almost $10,000 on a 24-day “personal vacation” to India earlier this year while expensing the girlfriend’s plane tick to Buenos Aires. “He’s been depleting the corporate account by spending monies from it on his personal expenses,” Barbara said in a filing in June.
She also said that David should be suspended from using the company checkbook and debit card immediately, “before there are no funds left in the corporate account.”
In countering Barbara’s charges, David, through his attorneys, said the India trip was legitimate corporate business, and that he only expensed a fraction—22.5 percent—of the total cost of it. In addition, he claims he is establishing a fact-checking website in India, and wanted to experience the culture. And he said he went to Buenos Aires to attend an international fact-checking conference there. His attorneys blasted Barbara—a site fact checker, mind you—for being a “loose cannon” who has to “have her way.”
And these are just some of the people Facebook would have you believe have enough credibility to spot “fake” news—even though the “fake news” narrative is made up to begin with.
The corporate lapdog media and its political enablers are now daily exposing themselves for the inconsolable charlatans they have always been.
J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.
Sources:
Tagged Under: Biometric data collection by Facebook, Fact-checking, fake news, Snopes.com
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