It’s the doctored pictures that puzzle David Mikkelson the most.
“How can anyone think Bush is really holding a book upside down?” asks the co-founder of rumor-debunking site Snopes.com. “But we get asked if they’re real. People are just looking for things to confirm what they’re inclined to believe.”
Hence pictures of Sarah Palin, or rather her head, PhotoShopped onto a model wearing a stars-and-stripes bikini and holding a gun. Or Obama apparently talking into the wrong end of a phone.
Of course, these pranks seem innocuous compared to the e-mail memes Mikkelson spends most of his time debunking – particularly stories about Obama being a Muslim and Palin banning books from a local library (both false). “You get substantive e-mail people want you to check,” he says. “But the things that tend to stick, unfortunately, are broad symbolic issues.”
When the Snopes.com site was launched by Mikkelson and wife Barbara in 1995, it was mainly about Disney legends and other urban myths people submitted. (The title, a family name in a William Faulkner book, was used by Mikkelson as an Internet handle. It has nothing to do with rumors, but has since become an Internet term for debunking). About five years ago, as revenue from advertising increased, Mikkelson made Snopes.com his full-time job, and even hired another employee to help sift through the submissions. Thousands visit the site every day, and its research is referenced by newspapers and television news.
The “double whammy” of an election season that has dragged on for a year, and two candidates virtually unknown to the general public means that the Southern California-based site gets about 1,000 e-mail submissions a day. And by two candidates, we mean the presidential on one side and the vice presidential on the other. “Surprisingly very few are about John McCain,” Mikkelson says. “There always tend to be fewer about Republican candidates, and he’s been around so long people know about him.”
Mikkelson goes through as many of the e-mail as he’s able, checks the claims and (when he can) tries to trace the source. Often he finds the accusations to be false, which rarely pleases critics from the other side.
“People say we’re obviously Republican, or obviously Democrat,” Mikkelson says. “We’re apparently biased in every conceivable direction.”
Which makes you wonder why he even bothers, since, as he says, people aren’t eager to let go of preconceived notions. “I sometimes wonder that,” he says with a rueful laugh. “But we get a lot of approval from people who want to know what the truth is.”
Plus, Snopes.com has gotten so popular that, at this point, Mikkelson stops debunking at his own – and the candidates’ – risk.
“People write to us and says, ‘we didn’t see it on your site, so it must be true.’ “