A flagrantly inaccurate Snopes fact check rating in the immigration debate has gone unnoticed and uncorrected for weeks, despite multiple attempts by The Daily Caller to notify the site of its erroneous reporting.
Kim LaCapria, a seasoned Snopes fact checker, produced a false “fact-check” regarding the use of photographer John Moore’s picture of a crying Honduran child to depict family separations at the Southern border.
The claim Ms. LaCapria fact-checks is “News media outlets falsely reported that a photograph of a crying toddler depicted a small girl separated from her mother at the border.”
LaCapria finds that the claim is “mostly false,” saying the media outlets in question “consistently reported that the young girl was never separated from her mother.” She cites excerpts from articles published by the Washington Post and CNN to support her findings, none of which include explicit statements that the child and her mother had been separated.
The Washington Post, prior to quietly editing it, published an article on June 21 that contained the following sentence:
“Time magazine ran a cover that used one of the images that has been most resonant in this past week, taken of a young girl crying as her mother was patted down by a Border Patrol agent before the two were separated.”
CNN promoted the photo — which was taken on June 12 — along with a statement from the photographer. CNN left out the fact that, according to the original article in Time magazine, Moore witnessed the mother and daughter leave the scene together after being loaded into the same van.
“One of the last people to get on the bus was the mother of this child and her daughter together,” he told CNN’s Ana Cabrera. “And when they went to body-search (the mother) against the vehicle, they asked her to put down her child. And right then, in that moment, the little girl broke into tears.
“It’s not unusual for toddlers in any circumstance to have separation anxiety. But I think this particular situation with the separation of families leads and gives a new meaning to that phrase.”
However, other articles posted by both of these outlets contain language that directly states or implies the separation of the llegal-immigrant mother and child in the photo. Further, sources including NY Daily News, BusinessInsider, Buzzfeed, and NBC have all published content using the photograph of the crying girl to discuss the separation of children at the border or saying she was separated from her mother after the photograph was taken.
The Daily Caller reached out to LaCapria with a list of media outlets which had directly stated the girl in the photo was separated from her mother less than two weeks ago, but did not receive a response.
LaCapria did not respond to a second inquiry from TheDC asking her how she arrived at her incorrect “fact-check.”
A more accurate fact-check of John Moore’s photograph is available – completed by the Daily Caller’s Amber Athey shortly after news broke of the truth behind the photograph.
Athey’s article clearly presents the numerous occasions in which the media reported false information behind the photograph, including the separation of the mother and child as well as the purpose for their entry into the country. (RELATED: Everything The Media Got Wrong About The Crying Girl On The TIME Cover)
LaCapria is no stranger to negligent “fact-checks,” having published numerous posts that have been criticized for their blatant bias toward Democrats and the liberal agenda. She outwardly identifies as a liberal, and has declared herself as “openly left-leaning” in the past. (RELATED: Fact-Checking Snopes: Website’s Political ‘Fact-Checker’ Is Just A Failed Liberal Blogger)
