Where the sites do differ is in the depth and quality of their coverage. On Snopes.com the Mikkelsons go to great lengths to address the finer details of each text. They supply critical analysis, as well as background and contextual information. They cite sources.
Not to disparage TruthorFiction.com owner Rich Buhler -- who does maintain an up-to-date and generally trustworthy resource -- but by comparison his analyses tend to be perfunctory, and his sourcing minimal at best.
Snopes.com boasts a 12-year record of providing accurate, dependable information and analysis, and in that time has earned the confidence of the media, government agencies, the business community, and the general public alike.
Given all of the above, Snopes is surely the preferable resource.
Is Snopes.com infallible?
No one is immune to error, and that includes the folks who run Snopes.com, TruthorFiction.com, and even, God knows, yours truly. Reader, if you take nothing else away from this commentary, I hope you will at least pay heed to this one important point: No information source is infallible.
Whether it be an urban legends website, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the Encyclopedia Britannica, mistakes can be made, nuances missed, and unconscious biases unleashed at any point in the fact-checking process.
Rule of thumb: Wherever possible, avoid depending on any single source of information, no matter how reliable it has proven to be in the past.
To quote Barbara Mikkelson, "It's just as much a mistake to look to a usually-reliable source to do all of the thinking, judging, and weighing as it was to unquestioningly believe every unsigned email that came along."
In the thorny search for truth, there's no substitute for doing one's own research and applying one's own careful judgment before considering oneself informed. That's an unbiased fact.
Poll: Does Snopes.com have a liberal bias?
1) Yes. 2) No. 3) Not sure.
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Sources and further reading:
Too Good to Be True? It Usually Is
Washington Post, 28 September 2008Citation Makes Snopes.com Work
Longview News-Journal, 18 October 2008Keeping Their Opinions to Themselves
New York Times, 18 October 2008False Authority Syndrome
Snopes.com, 16 May 2008Evaluating Information Sources: Basic Principles
Duke University Libraries, 30 May 2007
Last updated: 10/23/08
