A little over a month ago, Kevin Roderick rightly noted that Snopes’s purported debunking of Annie Jacobsen’s story did not seem particularly convincing. Despite agreeing with their conclusion, Kevin rightly noted that it appeared to be based on relatively few sources, at least when compared to several blogs that had followed the issue more closely.

I find Snopes entertaining and think that Barbara and David Mikkelson do a great service aggregating rumors and sifting the media reports, but their weak spot is the conclusions. Unfortunately, too many reporters cite Snopes as the authority on whether a rumor is true, instead of just another opinion based on reading the Web (i.e., no special expertise or sources). On many topics, their judgment doesn’t seem any more informed than a typical journalist or blogger (and as Cathy Seipp showed in a recent CityBeat column, Snopes — like everybody else — sometimes lets political bias color its take.)

I agreed wholeheartedly, and cited an additional example in the comments, namely the semi-debunking of the faux myth that Al Gore claimed to have “invented” the Internet. Read the heading, and you’ll see that the story is “false.” Only if you read the entire article defensively do you learn that the rumor is in fact substantially true, and “false” only in that he didn’t actually use the word “invent.” Rather, as the Mikkelsons eventually acknowledge, he claimed to have “taken initiative in inventing” the Internet – an equally ludicrous and baseless claim. But it’s a safe bet that most readers don’t read down that far.

Today, though, it looks like Kevin may have forgotten his earlier observations. Today, he linked favorably to the Martini Republicans’ attempted debunking of Zell Miller’s speech. Both Kevin and Alex’s attempted debunkies relied entirely on this Snopes entry, one which had itself been debunked within hours of the speech.

The heading on Kevin’s prior entry read “Snopes speaks, but so what?” That should have been the heading this time, too.

UPDATE: Professor Bainbridge takes another, more novel approach: pay attention to what John Kerry actually said on the Senate floor about the weapons systems in question. He finds Kerry bashing several of the weapon systems mentioned by Miller, while finding no references to others, and presumably none in support of any of them. Since this results in less than full vindication for Miller (it only mentions some of the weapons systems at issue), the professor declares a “draw” between Miller and his critics. I don’t think that’s right. Partial vindication for one side, vs. none at all for the other is not a draw; it’s a shut-out.

The Council has spoken. Congratulations to e-Claire for the winning Council entry, Peter’s Comment Touched Me Deeply (the comment is here), and to Dislogue for the winning non-Council entry, “The Big Lie: Still Going.”

I imagine that most cops would love to beat Al Franken senseless, but the Smarter Cop recommends giving him a time out instead.

Linda Lingle: Bo-ring. Her message was OK, I guess, but she spoke in a monotone. Zero charisma. How on earth did she manage to get elected governor as a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democrat state? The one highlight was at the end, when she called everyone in the room a mahalo, and no one seemed to care. Granted, this is New York, where you hear worse language every day, but still. It’s not as though these guys are all from New York, after all.
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