"The last line of defense against the torrent of half-truths, untruths and outright fakery that make up so much of the modern internet is in a downscale strip mall near the beach. Snopes, the fact-checking website, does not have an office designed to impress, or even be noticed. A big sign outside still bears the name of the previous tenant, a maker of underwater headphones. Inside there's nothing much -- a bunch of improvised desks, a table tennis table, cartons of Popchips and cases of Dr. Pepper. It looks like a dot-com on the way to nowhere."
Streitfeld, an experienced media writer at the Times, mentioned controversy about the site and Mikkelson but quickly dismissed it as "fake news" spread by conservative enemies of the site and without any basis. Here is Streitfeld's treatment:
"One way to chart Snopes's increasing prominence is by measuring the rise in fake news about the site itself. If you believe the internet, the founder of Snopes, David Mikkelson, has a longer rap sheet than Al Capone.
"He was supposedly arrested for committing fraud and corruption and running a pit bull ring. In the wake of a deal that Snopes and others made this month to start fact-checking for Facebook, new slurs and allegations poured forth. The underlying message of these spurious attacks is that the movement to fact-check the internet is a left-wing conspiracy whose real goal is to censor the right, and therefore must be resisted at all costs (emphasis added)."
Thus Streitfeld and the Times, with no real analysis. dismiss attacks as false.
But here is the part of the story the Times did not see fit to mention either in Streitfeld's article or one published the same day by his colleague Jeremy W. Peters, whose story quoting Snopes in positive fashion was headlined With Claims of 'Fake News,' Conservatives Take Aim at Media.
Snopes Scandal
Missing entirely from the Times coverage was a story broken by the Daily Mail five days previously and re-reported by Daily Caller reporter Peter Hasson in Snopes Co-Founder Accused Of Embezzling Company Money, Spending It On Prostitutes.
Hasson continued in his Dec. 21 story:
"The founder of mythbusting website Snopes, which was recently tapped by Facebook as one of four 'fact-check' organizations patrolling the site for 'fake news,' embezzled $98,000 in company funds before spending it on 'himself and the prostitutes he hired,' according to legal documents filed by his ex-wife reviewed by the Daily Mail."
"After divorcing from his first wife, Barbara Mikkelson, David Mikkelson married Elyssa Young, a former porn star and current escort who now works for Snopes as an administrator, according to the Daily Mail."
As originally reported by TheDC, Snopes almost exclusively employs leftists as fact-checkers, many of whom have exhibited a clear distaste for Republican voters. TheDC could not identify a single Snopes fact-checker who comes from a conservative background.
Not covered in these excerpts are claims from the divorce papers that the Mikkelsons were taking huge income from their operation, reputedly $700,000 one year for her and $350,000 for him. That kind of money is not typical for bloggers. No outside (and certainly not the New York Times profile) explored where that money came from.
The gist of the scandal was confirmed also by Forbes Magazine in The Daily Mail Snopes Story And Fact Checking The Fact Checkers. Forbes reporter Kalev Leetaru wrote on Dec. 22, 2016, "When I reached out to David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, for comment, I fully expected him to respond with a lengthy email in Snopes' trademark point-by-point format, fully refuting each and every one of the claims in the Daily Mail's article and writing the entire article off as "fake news."
The reporter continued:
"It was with incredible surprise therefore that I received David's one-sentence response which read in its entirety 'I'd be happy to speak with you, but I can only address some aspects in general because I'm precluded by the terms of a binding settlement agreement from discussing details of my divorce.'"
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