View in Your Browser MEMBERS ONLY Snopes Digest June 23, 2020 • Issue #13 1 Let's Talk Style Every newsroom has its own style guide. We share some insight into ours. 2 Behind the Snopes Vice President of Editorial Doreen Marchionni explains the reasoning behind a recent style change. 3 Since We Last Met What's been going on with the Snopes team. 4 In Case You Missed It The most popular and most important stories on Snopes.com lately. 5 Snopes-worthy Reads Good stories we’ve shared amongst ourselves recently. Issue #13 edited by Brandon Echter and Bond Huberman. 1. Let's talk style, Member. Lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my, see what we did there? Many readers probably didn’t notice the Oxford (serial) comma after tigers, but the grammar nerds among us probably did and are busily dividing into opposing camps. Oxford comma supporters on one side; Oxford comma haters on the other. The debate rages on, but the Snopes flag is firmly planted. Our founder David Mikkelson (arguably one of the godfathers of the internet) prefers the Oxford comma’s use for clarity’s sake. Any publisher worth its salt follows a style guide. Whether it’s a dog-eared industry manual, a Post-it stuck to a monitor, or an endless digital document, we all need a guide to help us remember the rules and navigate the unknown. For the most part, Snopes adheres to Associated Press (AP) style, a common journalistic standard, and we refer to any exceptions or quirks as "Snopes style." For example, we use title case in our headlines, capitalizing all words except articles and prepositions, because we think it looks nicer. We generally avoid profanity unless it’s quoted material, and we eighty-sixed the term “fake news.” We follow a modified version of Modern Language Association (MLA) for source citations because it’s part of our roots. And when we do need to update our style or deviate, we come together as a newsroom to decide. (Our newsroom leader Doreen Marchionni explains a recent example of this below.) Style guides aren’t just grammar rulebooks chiseled from stone. They’re meeting points where we can reflect on what traditions are worth keeping — and where we must evolve. Thanks for meeting us here, Team Snopes Snopes-tionary Speak like an insider! Each newsletter, we’ll explain a term or piece of fact- checking lingo that we use on the Snopes team. Trope: A common recurring idea or theme. For example, shortly after George Floyd’s death in police custody, readers inquired about Floyd’s alleged rap sheet, which had become a viral meme. Shifting public focus from a police officer’s actions onto an individual’s perceived violent criminal history is not uncommon in the wake of such events. Reporter Jessica Lee unpacks the “he had it coming” trope, and the specific claims about Floyd, in an exhaustive report. 2. Behind The Snopes Let’s talk about what’s going on with Snopes: the newsroom, the products, the people, and everything and anything that makes Snopes, Snopes. This week Vice President of Editorial Doreen Marchionni explains the reasoning behind a recent style change. My husband and I met at a newspaper 22 years ago. He was a proud Blasian (half Black, half Korean) who worked in tech support, and I was a proud "McTalian" (half Italian, half Irish) who was new to editing/management. Albert told me he asked the copy desk, where writing style standards are vetted and enforced, why "black" was lowercased when referring to such Americans. He was told that was Associated Press style, and that the newspaper (like most papers) followed AP style. Period. Flash forward to spring 2020. I’m now the vice president of editorial at Snopes. At the height of the anti-police-brutality protests after the death of George Floyd, several editors and reporters raised the same question to me. At Snopes we generally follow AP style but have no formal copy desk, so I did what we often do in the newsroom: sent around a short survey asking for everyone's thoughts. The general consensus was swift: Black people in the U.S represent a distinct culture and population as a proper noun and therefore warranted capitalization, not just for precision and accuracy in our reporting, but for dignity. We instituted the style change immediately on June 8 — and The Associated Press came to the same decision more than a week later. It was a visceral reminder of why I like working at Snopes: We don't operate by rule of orthodoxy or tradition, and we try hard to let the best ideas win, regardless of who (or what) presents them. It's also a humble reminder we have more work to do on this front around potentially outdated references to other groups and identities. We'll keep you posted on that progress here. Next time, you’ll hear from another member of the Snopes team about a unique aspect of working here that you might find interesting. Do you want us to cover something specific? Write to us here! We Want to Hear from You What have you experienced during this coronavirus pandemic? How are you holding up? We want to hear how our readers are living through this crisis. Tell Us Your Story 3. Since We Last Met What’s been going on with the Snopes team. We have a new addition to Team Snopes! Please welcome Lisa Wang, who is now Snopes’ community manager, working to support Snopes Members as well as several other projects across the company. Assignments Editor Bond Huberman joined NPR’s “Here and Now” to discuss the massive wave of misinformation that followed the death of George Floyd and the subsequent protests. Listen here. Twitter has been using Snopes fact checks to help debunk misleading or manipulated information shared on its platforms. You may have seen this notification pop up recently when a congressional candidate shared a fake image of KKK marchers identifying themselves as Democrats. We had debunked it back in 2019. Senior Reporter Alex Kasprak joined PEN America's "The PEN Pod" to talk about the world of fact checking. Take a listen. Featured Collection We’ve investigated literally hundreds of claims during the COVID-19 pandemic. Explore them all, by category. Read the Fact Checks 4. In Case You Missed It The latest news and fact checks on Snopes.com. Is it true that U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave George Floyd’s family a folded U.S. flag meant to honor veterans? The claim circulated after Floyd's brother spoke at a congressional hearing on racism among American cops. We checked the U.S. Flag Code to see if Pelosi’s gift was permissible. The use of tear gas by police against protesters has come under fierce scrutiny in recent weeks. Some observers pointed out the dark irony that using tear gas is banned in warfare under international law. Does such a ban really exist? Snopes investigates here. The concepts of white privilege and systemic racism have also become burning topics of debate. In one viral video, a Black ex-police officer points to his own success and life experience as evidence that white privilege isn’t a real phenomenon. Snopes Senior Writer Alex Kasprak examined the author’s claims in light of how “white privilege” is defined and the empirical evidence for its existence. Will U.S. President Donald Trump willingly leave office at the end of his elected term? Some of his opponents are skeptical that he will, and it has even been claimed that he came right out and said as much on national TV. Did he really say it, and if so, did he really mean it? Click here for the fact check. In an all-too-familiar reaction to the outcry over the death of George Floyd while in police custody, internet memes rehashed a litany of Floyd’s past arrests and incarcerations, as if to justify the way Floyd died. We scoured court records to verify what was true and false in these memes and asked experts why Black men in particular so often get reduced to the sum of their past mistakes. Have a story tip? Send it here! Mental Health Break Team Snopes investigates some grim and depressing claims, so we know how important it is to your mental health to see something silly, funny, or just plain heartwarming. Here are some links that made us smile. A Compilation of Bad Flute Covers - YouTube Making a Garden That Welcomes the Birds - Margaret Roach, The New York Times 5. Snopes-worthy Reads What Team Snopes is reading across the web. My Fake News Whodunnit: Caught Up in a Senegal Fake News Scam Michelle Madsen, BBC News Coronavirus: Fake News Less of a Problem Than Confusing Government Messages – New Study Stephen Cushion, Maria Kyriakidou, Marina Morani, and Nikki Soo, The Conversation A Conspiracy Made in America May Have Been Spread by Russia Nicole Perlroth, The New York Times Civil Rights Organizations Want Advertisers to Dump Facebook Rebecca Heilweil, Recode Have any recommended reads? Submit them here. The Pets of Snopes It’s true: The Snopes “team” was once just two people and a cat. Twenty- five years later, we have more humans and more cats (and even some dogs) than at our once-humble beginnings. We want you to meet our furry, fact-finding friends because, well, who doesn’t love a cute animal picture? Meet Operations Assistant Evan Pattison’s feline roommate, Stoli! This sweet, lazy, chubby Russian Blue really enjoys being around people — in fact, if you ask him a question, he’ll meow right back at you.