Snopes Chews Up False Cheeseburger Emoji Story

Award-winning fact-checking website Snopes cites my blog post debunking Fox News “cheeseburger emoji controversy”

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Earlier this week I debunked claims that Fox News failed to report former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s indictment in favour of a story about cheeseburger emojis.

The post has been cited by award-winning fact-checking website Snopes.

From the “About” page of Snopes website:

The Snopes.com web site was founded by David Mikkelson, a project begun in 1994 as an expression of his interest in researching urban legends that has since grown into the oldest and largest fact-checking site on the Internet, one widely regarded by journalists, folklorists, and laypersons alike as one of the world’s essential resources. Snopes.com is routinely included in annual “Best of the Web” lists and has been the recipient of two Webby awards. Snopes.com personnel have made multiple appearances as guests on national news programs such as 20/20, ABC World News, CNN Sunday Morning, and NPR’s All Things Considered, and they and their work have been profiled in numerous major news publications, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Reader’s Digest.

With over 20 years’ experience as a professional researcher and writer, David has created in Snopes.com what has come to be regarded as an online touchstone of rumor research. The site’s work has been described as painstaking, scholarly, and reliable, and has been lauded by the world’s top folklorists, including Jan Harold Brunvand, Gary Alan Fine, and Patricia Turner. Hundreds of the site’s articles have been cited by authors in a variety of disciplines, and various of their articles have been published in textbooks currently in use in the U.S. and Canadian school systems.

Via “Did Fox News Ignore News of Paul Manafort’s Indictment and Cover a Cheeseburger Emoji Controversy Instead?” by Kim LaCapria, Snopes, October 30, 2017:

Conservative news did not make a meal of a silly emoji story about cheeseburgers instead of covering the federal investigation into alleged Russian election tampering.

[…]

Although it appears that the meme began as a joke about Fox News covering a cheeseburger emoji controversy in lieu of the topical events surrounding Paul Manafort, it quickly became something people on social media believed was literally the case.

Independent fact-checking site Shooting the Messenger moved quickly to debunk the story:

But did the famously Trump-friendly news network really fail to report Manafort’s indictment in favour of Google’s apparent emoji cheeseburger crisis?

The answer, unfortunately for Hannity-haters everywhere, is no.

As this clip from this morning’s Fox & Friends shows, the bulk of airtime was spent in anticipation of the indictment, with the emoji story briefly appearing to pad out the show between updates….

The story later made an appearance as part of a brief news round-up that aired immediately before a commercial break.

By comparison, CNN also covered the emoji debate, yet Twitter focused on the early morning show’s comprehensive coverage of the Manafort news.

Click here to read the full article.