Sandra Dunham
What follows is a brief coffee conversation I had recently. Them: “Poor Joe Biden has no idea what he’s doing anymore. He just boarded a plane he had just gotten off of.”
Me: “Oh no. Imagine he’s running the country. WAIT. Where did you hear this? It wasn’t Twitter was it?”
Them: “Yes, but from many different sources.”
Me: “Well look it up and see whether it’s true.”
Them: “I can’t be bothered.”
Lies on Social Media — repeat versions do not make them true! It might not surprise frequent readers that I can (and will) be bothered to look it up, force a discussion, and then write about it. The first article I found seemed to validate this story. It was from the Economic Times, which Media Bias Fact Check reports as right-leaning and as a questionable source.
However, the next article reports that this is untrue. It was from Snopes, which Media Bias Fact Check reports as centre-left-leaning with “high factual” reporting. According to Snopes, Biden boarded the plane to greet and thank the people still on the plane who had “helped to bring the prisoners home.”
What is true? We likely will never know for sure, but my money is on the less inflammatory story reported by Snopes.
Maybe soon we will have a social media outlet dedicated to debunking Snopes.