For the past few years snopes. Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it — kinda makes you wonder what they were hiding. Well, finally we know. David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando Valley of California started the website about 13 years ago — and they have no formal background or experience in investigative research.
After a few years it gained popularity believing it to be unbiased and neutral, but over the past couple of years people started asking questions who was behind it and did they have a selfish motivation? The reason for the questions — or skepticisms — is a result of snopes. He never called Bud. In fact, I learned from Bud Gregg no one from snopes. As we all now know from this presidential election, liberals have a purpose agenda to discredit anything that appears to be conservative.
So, I say this now to everyone who goes to snopes. Use it only to lead you to their references where you can link to and read the sources for yourself. Motions by both the plaintiffs and defendants are scheduled to be heard on Aug. Court documents contain a number of salacious allegations made by Proper Media, Bardav and Green, who now works for Snopes and is countersuing Proper Media.
The case, however, hinges around the ownership structure of Bardav. Both sides maintain that Bardav is an S corporation, which means the company can pass corporate income, losses, deductions, and credits through to shareholders for federal tax purposes, thus avoiding double taxation on corporate income.
In order to receive the tax break, the organization can only have shareholders who are individuals, not corporations. That would also make Proper Media the beneficial owner of 50 percent of the company, giving it equal footing with Mikkelson. Bardav asserts, on the contrary, that each of the five shareholders have individual ownership claims, as opposed to joint power. If the latter is true, the sale to five people would mean that half of Bardav is owned by a partnership, and Bardav is no longer an S corporation.
The partners would have collective rights to the 50 percent interest, Chasalow said. However, if Barbara Mikkelson sold her single share in five, fractional pieces, then there would six owners, with each owner maintaining individual rights to the shares. Presumably, if the court finds that there are six owners, and not two, then that would benefit the defense, as that would leave Proper Media plaintiffs Richmond and Schoentrup with a minority stake.
As of p. The case of Proper Media versus Snopes goes to court Aug. Proper Media will argue that Mikkelson is unfit to serve as a director of the company. Bardav will seek the release of advertising revenue accrued since April. San Diego extends deadline to negotiate sale of Tailgate Park to Padres. Sections U. Science Technology Business U. Prominent fact-checker Snopes apologizes for plagiarism. Between and , Mikkelson regularly plagiarized reporting from other news outlets in an effort, he said, to scoop up traffic.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Mikkelson attributed this behavior to his lack of formal journalism experience. A number of times I crossed the line to where it was copyright infringement. I own that. Founded in by Mikkelson and his then-wife, Barbara Hamel, Snopes bills itself as "the internet's definitive fact-checking site," and is a two-time Webby Award winner cited by the likes of the New York Times and the Washington Post.
But in recent years, the site has been troubled by a bitter ownership dispute. In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Mikkelson said that he created the Zarronandia pseudonym as a joke intended to mislead the trolls and conspiracy theorists who frequently targeted the site and its writers in the run-up to the US presidential election. Knowingly misleading readers by using a fake name is considered unethical for many news outlets — especially one that markets itself as a bulwark of truth and transparency.
Far worse is plagiarism. I hated it and wouldn't tell any of the staff to do it, but he did it all the time. One, who asked to remain anonymous, told BuzzFeed News that "taking credit for other people's work" was "part of his model. The Zarronandia byline first appeared on the site in on an article that seems to have been plagiarized in its entirety, except for a few minor word changes, from a Reuters bulletin about Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses.
Reuters confirmed it does not currently have any licensing agreement with Snopes, but declined to answer questions about any past agreements. Another Zarronandia article , an obituary of David Bowie, pieces together paragraphs from E! Online and the LA Times , using near-identical phrasing and sequencing. Emails and Slack messages seen by BuzzFeed News suggest that, over the course of at least two years starting September , plagiarism may have been routine practice for Mikkelson.
In one Slack message from January , Mikkelson detailed his strategy for copying and then quickly rewriting articles after publishing. Mikkelson did not dispute the authenticity of any of these exchanges and attributed them to his poor understanding of how news gathering works.
But it wasn't until Zarronandia began covering the US presidential election that the eccentric persona seemed to develop a life of his own. There was much to debunk.
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