Independent urban legend tracking and fact-checking website Snopes took a huge amount of fire on Saturday after marking a true story about President Joe Biden wearing a hard hat backwards “false” — so much heat that eventually they reversed their own ruling and the story is now marked “true” on the site.
At issue was a photo of Joe Biden wearing a hard hat backwards, which went viral on the right leaning side of social media before garnering enough attention to warrant a Snopes check.
The photo, which shows Biden wearing hard hat backwards, was included in the Snopes article that first called the story false.
The first tweet used in the Snopes article was a zoomed in photo of Biden wearing a hard hat backwards.
The close-up was from a photo of Biden wearing a hard backwards that was shared by Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar.
They then also included a tweet which showed the same hat on a construction worker’s head facing the other direction.
Pointing out the bill of the hat, the Snopes article then accused the construction worker of being the one wearing the hard hat wrong, rather than that Biden wore the hardhat backwards as shown in the photos of him wearing it backwards.
“Do construction workers sometimes wear their hard hats backwards? Yes. But to do so, the internal suspension has to be reversed to fit correctly, which explains why, when Biden donned the hat with the brim forward, the nape strap ended up on his forehead,” the original article concluded.
One X user pointed out the logical flaw fairly succinctly. “So the nape strap determines if on correctly??” wrote X user Vapid Surplus. “Thx.”
There were many other reactions.
Eventually, Snopes responded to the feedback by reversing their ruling on the photos of Biden wearing a hard backwards to True.
The updated article contained an editor’s note, explaining the complete 180.
So ultimately, the fact-checkers ruled that the obviously backward hat was backward after all, and that the photo of Biden wearing a hard hat backwards was indeed a photo of Biden wearing a hard hat backwards. But only after some convincing.
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Pointing out the bill of the hat, the Snopes article then accused the construction worker of being the one wearing the hard hat wrong, rather than that Biden wore the hardhat backwards as shown in the photos of him wearing it backwards.
Fact-checking in a nutshell
Is it the seasoned professional who knows how to put on his own hat? No. It’s the senile old man doddering through a ten-minute photo op.
I… hey, listen here, Jack, we uh… in my day… Corn Pop told me to wear it like that.
God could my dad wear a hat
I really want a list of snopes and politifact being utterly wrong. It would be awful to read through, but so satisfying
Snopes tends to be better about apolitical stuff.
I’m surprised politifact is even a thing anymore. I remember them throwing up obvious bullshit going back to the Obama Administration.
What a time to be alive
That is NOT poop running down the president’s leg. Stop being mean!
*spends four hours writing article on how it’s not poop*
Edit: Okay, it MIGHT be poop.
Every Snopes article now is like “well it’s true but I don’t care. Verdict: FALSE”
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Counterpoint: why the hell is this a story in the first place
Biden wore a hat backwards. Awesome. How does this affect anyone’s life whatsoever
Because Caleb Howe has thin skin and couldn’t just have a laugh.
Is this like the american version of rishi sunak having absolutely no idea how to use a contactless card machine when he tried to do a photo op at a petrol station?
I can see how these blow up. It’s a moment that shows how utterly separated their lives are from the average working class person.
oh that’s a rerun of a moment from the 1992 US presidential election
I did that not too long ago lol. Some girls at McDonalds had to show me how to use it.
I’m working class, I just use cash and my old card most the time lol.
I dont get how this became a story and I definitely dont get why they have to bullshit so hard.
Construction workers do wear their hard hats backwards all the time… I used to wear my hard hat backwards all the time. There is like no chance I am not flipping it backwards for a photo op. My long time superintendent has had his brim backwards since he was a labourer…
Like why didn’t team Biden just respond with “dudes rock”.
You wore it with the nape strap on your forehead?
this is the insane thing about spectacular politics. like, we know joe biden is not a construction worker, has never worked in a factory. everyone from the pols to the workers to the media to the viewers knows what the phrase “photo op” means. we feel outrage not because they’re showing images that lie to us, but because we feel that the lying is being done lazily and incompetently. we’re hurt that they’re paying a team of handlers and consultants million-plus salaries and not one of them thought to interrupt the photo shoot and tell the president to turn his hat around.
in a shensh we are all in the Bluey Fandom sniff
When sitting around doing fuck all or say taking a photo, Heck yeah.
Please god let this result in the klob getting whacked via car bomb.
this is the kind of shit they would have called a “gaffe” in like 2008 lmao. This would have been the top news story on every network for a week.
I mean honestly as much hate as I have for
this would’ve been a bigger story if he did it. Mostly because of the racism but also because Biden does dumber shit than this on a weekly basis.It’s so weird to think how different it was. Howard Dean made a weird yell and it was the main story for like 2 months. Mitt Romney said he had binders full of women and it destroyed his whole campaign.
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MSM makes money directly on corporate advertising and indirectly on high-profile establishment figures being regularly willing to do interviews and such. Being inhospitable to the status quo would imperil both of those things. There’s the last part done for you.
Nicely put, thanks.
@Abracadaniel@hexbear.net got it, Citations Needed did it here
Imagine this being Biden’s Dean scream moment lol
:biden-hard-hat:
Nice to see that wearing hard hat backwards is the major problem there.
Independent urban legend tracking and fact-checking website Snopes
is it though?
If they’re lying about something as pathetic as this, what serious things are they lying about? I remember shitlibs trying to own people on Twitter using snopes and it cracked me up every time.
