Viral hoax smearing Chick-fil-A leaves ‘fact checker’ Snopes with egg on its face

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As the old adage goes, a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.

Case in point: The reaction to a tweet spreading falsehood about the restaurant chain Chick-fil-A. The tweet claimed the chain’s charitable donations contributed to efforts to introduce the death penalty for homosexuality in Uganda.

The claim is “an audacious liberal hoax,” the Washington Examiner reported.

And while the number of those who “liked” the erroneous tweet is troubling, that’s nothing compared to the actions of the “fact-checking” site Snopes, which rated the truthfulness of the claim as “mixed.”

Brad Polumbo, a commentary writer at the Examiner, called this rating a “massive disservice.”

The tweet in question was “liked” by over 118,000 social media users and retweeted by more than 57,000.

The reason Snopes rated the claim as mixed? “The Ugandan minister did not signal an intent to legalize the murder of LGBT people.”

More from the Examiner on the hoax that went viral:

Chick-fil-A’s only connection to any of this is that its owners — not the company — through their separate foundation donate to the National Christian Foundation, the 8th-largest nonprofit in the U.S. That foundation works with Christian charitable groups. And there’s a weak connection between a tiny percentage of the groups NCF works with and anti-LGBT ministers in Uganda. Yet connecting those groups to ministers does not connect them to this legislation. Even Snopes admits “it’s not clear to what extent National Christian Foundation-funded entities were involved in the creation or promotion of a bill to make homosexuality punishable by death.”

So the truthfulness of the progressive claims that Chick-fil-A “funded” these laws is not “mixed.” It’s completely nonexistent.

 

Polumbo accurately noted that it’s sad that we have to fact-check the fact-checkers.

“Unfortunately… many ostensibly neutral fact-checkers have become too obviously infected by liberal bias for us to take them at their word,” he said.

Chick-fil-A has long been a target of the rabid left, primarily because of the deceased founder’s Christian beliefs in support of the sanctity of marriage.

Not that this has had an effect on their bottom line.

As of June 2019, the chain was up to 2,363 restaurants and is reportedly worth $10.5 billion, making it the third-largest restaurant chain in America, trailing Starbucks ($20.5 billion) and McDonald’s ($38.5 billion).

This coming after years of being maligned, smeared, and attacked by everyone from congressional Democrats to Hollywood actors and the mainstream media.

Here’s a sampling of responded to the latest controversy from Twitter:

As for Snopes and the charge of bias, the fact-checker just found itself the target of severe criticism for a flagrant attack on Christian satirical news outlet The Babylon Bee.

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