Babylon Bee scores win against NYT

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The Babylon Bee scored a minor victory this weekend.

The New York Times has agreed to remove language from a March 19 report characterizing the conservative satire website as a "far-right misinformation site" that "sometimes trafficked in misinformation under the guise of satire."

This is obviously a lie. The Babylon Bee just publishes jokes. It’s no different from the Onion or the New Yorker’s Andy Borowitz, except that, unlike the former, its jokes are tailored to a right-leaning audience and, unlike the latter, its jokes are actually funny. For some reason, members of the legacy press hate this.

Following the publication of the March 19 article, titled, “For Political Cartoonists, the Irony Was That Facebook Didn’t Recognize Irony,” the Babylon Bee sent the New York Times a demand letter accusing the paper of record of defamation.

This weekend, nearly three months after the fact, the conservative group got a response from the New York Times’s senior counsel.

“We have carefully reviewed the the [sic] concerns raised in your letter and, in response to those concerns, we have removed the reference to the Babylon Bee from the article and appended a correction,” attorney Dana Green said.

The New York Times article now bears an editor’s note, which reads:

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the Babylon Bee, a right-leaning satirical website, and a controversy regarding the handling of its content by Facebook and the fact-checking site Snopes. While both Facebook and Snopes previously have classified some Babylon Bee articles as misinformation, rather than satire, they have dropped those claims, and the Babylon Bee denies that it has trafficked in misinformation.
For the record, this is what the newspaper originally reported:

Last year, Facebook said it had stopped more than 2.2 million political ad submissions that had not yet been verified and that targeted U.S. users. It also cracked down on the conspiracy group QAnon and the Proud Boys, removed vaccine misinformation, and displayed warnings on more than 150 million pieces of content viewed in the United States that third-party fact checkers debunked.
But satire kept popping up as a blind spot. In 2019 and 2020, Facebook often dealt with far-right misinformation sites that used “satire” claims to protect their presence on the platform … For example, The Babylon Bee, a right-leaning site, frequently trafficked in misinformation under the guise of satire.
The New York Times report offered no additional examples of right-wing misinformation sites. Only the Babylon Bee is mentioned by name. Adding to the shoddiness of the reporting is the fact that, in alleging that the Babylon Bee is a depository of far-right misinformation, the March 19 article includes a hyperlink to an Oct. 11 New York Times report recognizing the group as a legitimate satire website.

New York Times editors apparently don’t read the New York Times.

Also, the irony of the paper of record publishing an outright, since-detracted falsehood in an article warning of the dangers of online falsehoods can't be missed. It's a joke worthy of a professional satire site.

We’ve written before about the press's bizarre fatwa against this harmless conservative satire group. This has been going on for some time now, and it’s all because the Babylon Bee tells jokes from a right-leaning perspective.

It’s good the New York Times finally updated its reporting. But the fact that the original false claim was even published is just further proof that the national media, the same institution that canonized fake newsman Jon Stewart as a fearless, trailblazing advocate for the truth, positively hate it when the jokes are aimed in the other direction.
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The Lugenpresse's usual coy little "oopsy-daisy-never-mind" retraction, but at least now someone retaliated against their bullshit. Here's hoping the Losenpresse's losing streak continues.
 
I'm glad non-babylon articles are written about this to highlight it because the truth is, the damage is done. That's what I hate the most about these obvious lies, near-lies, and libel from all progressive rags, they know they can say pretty much whatever they want and then just update the article a week later and everyone they expected to read it will have read it and never see it again.
A modern form of propaganda at work.
 
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I think this was done purely because NYT's defensive case isn't going their way with Project Veritas. Hopefully more lawsuits happen when they pretend their opinions is factual news.
 
I think this was done purely because NYT's defensive case isn't going their way with Project Veritas. Hopefully more lawsuits happen when they pretend their opinions is factual news.
This is what I was thinking. Legal probably sent down a letter to the mouth breathers on the editorial team saying "hey guys, maybe cool it with the whole slandering other publications thing until we're out of the woods with our current libel case, yeah?"
 
They fucking know Babylon Bee is a satire site and noone would take their articles seriously, they just wanted to get them banned from social media under pretense of being "fake news". And all of that because BB makes fun of mainstream media's shittines, bias and partisanship
Imagine being a once respected newspaper with 150+ years of tradition, and getting bullied by a christian satire site run by two guys so badly, that you attempt to semi-cancel them via insincere reporting on them
 
Imagine being a once respected newspaper with 150+ years of tradition, and getting bullied by a christian satire site run by two guys so badly, that you attempt to semi-cancel them via insincere reporting on them
That part is average "day in the life of a journalist" stuff. The funny part is when they lose.
 
That's not a win any more than a bully lifting your head out of the toilet bowl for a few seconds is a win. The NYT needs to lose enough money that they never do this shit again, either because they recognize that it will impact their ability to exist, or because they cease to exist.
 
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