PolitiFact has done it again, this time ruling that a 100% real photo of Joe Biden with former KKK leader Robert Byrd is mostly false because the caption referred to Byrd as a Grand Wizard and not his correct title of Exalted Cyclops:
HAHA! Facebook hires Politifact to 'fact-check' a photograph of Biden with Robert Byrd. Despite the photo being real, their judgement is 'Mostly False,' because the caption gets Byrd's rank wrong. He wasn't a Grand Wizard, but an Exalted Cyclops https://t.co/rxYbufysv4
— Chadwick Moore (@Chadwick_Moore) August 29, 2019
Here’s the post they’re fact-checking:
They really are “beyond parody” at this point:
Beyond parody https://t.co/ZkczKiuUlK
— John Hayward (@Doc_0) August 30, 2019
The Facebook post claims that Joe Biden was photographed with Robert Byrd, Grand Wizard of the KKK. That exaggerates Byrd’s role in the KKK.
In the 1940s, Byrd organized and led a local Klan chapter as its Exalted Cyclops, but he wasn’t a Grand Wizard. And he ultimately renounced his views from that period of his life though his past and former ties to the KKK were raised throughout the rest of his life.
By the time this photo of Byrd and Biden was taken, Byrd’s public expressions of regret and shame over his earlier involvement in the KKK was well-documented and often-repeated.
We rate this Facebook post Mostly False.
And this is why Facebook’s fact-checking initiative is bound to fail.
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