Information Warfare – The far-left ideological campaign to suppress and cancel any form of conservative commentary, opinion, or analysis is now extending to conservative satire. In a recent article about Facebook’s difficulty in dealing with satire, The New York Times (NYT) pointed to The Babylon Bee as an example of a “far-right misinformation site” that “sometimes trafficked in misinformation under the guise of satire.”
But as the CEO of the Bee notes in his email, this is simply ideological information warfare – “the bottom line: The New York Times is using misinformation to smear us as being a source of misinformation.”
The NYT said the Bee dishonestly “claims” to be satire to protect its presence on Facebook and other social media sites. In response to this outrageous assault on free speech, the Bee’s counsel sent a letter to The New York Times demanding a retraction. The satire site did so, they noted in an email, “because their article was—and remains—defamatory.”
In the Demand letter the Bee’s attorneys state:
Both versions of this article constitute defamation by libel, libel per se, and the tortious interference with business and contractual relations. As to the original version of your article, to ostensibly support its casted aspersions, it ironically links to another New York Times article from October 11, 2020which is essentially a profile piece about the Babylon Bee being a legitimate satire website, and it contains no mention of “misinformation” whatsoever. Here’s a link to the demand letter.
The email from CEO Seth Dillon explained the story behind it:
In response to us making some noise about their malicious mischaracterization of us, The Times published an update. It reads:
The update is every bit as damaging (and false) as the original. We have not, in fact, feuded with Snopes as to whether we publish satire or misinformation. Snopes retracted that insinuation with an editors’ note saying it was never their intent to call our motives into question.
It’s therefore misleading and malicious to characterize that incident as a feud, as if Snopes ever openly stood by the claim that we are misinformation and not satire. This mischaracterization by The Times is obviously intended to cast doubt about our legitimacy and motives.
And these mischaracterizations are nothing new. Previously, New York Times reporter Kevin Roose wrote a defamatory piece that claimed we “capitalize on confusion” and that we have a “habit of skirting the line between misinformation and satire,” whatever that means.
Here’s the bottom line: The New York Times is using misinformation to smear us as being a source of misinformation.
TRIGGER WARNING – THIS IS NOT SATIRE – IT IS OUTRAGEOUSLY, UNBELIEVABLY TRUE
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