[Peace-discuss] RE Babylon Bee rejects NYT smears and gets retraction from NYT

[Mildred O'brien]

Funny, I seem to have the same problem as the B.Bee--apparently my satire is so subtle, some people mistake it for "misinformation."  Cinicysm seems to be a lost art in this day of "fake news."
mo'b


-----Original Message-----
From: J.B. Nicholson via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
To: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Sent: Mon, Jun 14, 2021 7:26 pm
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Babylon Bee rejects NYT smears and gets retraction from NYT

https://on.rt.com/baag has the info on that:

> The Babylon Bee is in fact a satirical site and not a “far-right misinformation”
> one that “feuded” with Facebook and fact-checkers, The New York Times has finally
> conceded after being threatened with a defamation lawsuit.
> 
> “This is huge. The NY Times was using misinformation to smear us as being a source
> of it,” Bee CEO Seth Dillon tweeted[1] on Monday, calling it “malicious” behavior.
> 
> “We pushed back hard and won. Thanks to everyone who voiced and offered their
> support. We don't have to take this nonsense lying down. Remember that,” Dillon
> added.
> 
> Also on rt.com Satirical site Babylon Bee demands NYT retract ‘defamatory’ attack
> equating its humor to ‘misinformation’
> 
> An article about Facebook censorship of irony in March, authored by the Times’
> tech reporter Mike ‘Rat King’ Isaac, described the Bee as a “far-right
> misinformation site” that sometimes trafficked in fake news disguised as satire to
> avoid censorship from Big Tech. It was the only example offered, too.
> 
> After the initial complaint from Dillon, the Times edited the article to say that
> the Bee, “a right-leaning satirical site, has feuded with Facebook and the
> fact-checking site Snopes over whether the site published misinformation or
> satire.” That, too, was wrong.
> 
> We objected to this pretty strongly, so @MikeIsaac removed the sentence that said
> we trafficked in misinformation. In its place, he put an update that said we'd
> feuded with @snopes and @Facebook about whether we're misinformation or satire.
> But that wasn't true, either. — Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) June 14, 2021[2]
> 
> “The update is every bit as damaging (and false) as the original,” Dillon tweeted
> at the time, and explained that Snopes has actually retracted their insinuation
> about the Bee’s motives, and even created a whole new label for satire. Snopes has
> also discontinued their fact-checking partnership with Facebook, in early 2019.
> 
> A correction dated June 10 – of which the Times notified the Bee on Friday – now
> says the earlier version of the article “imprecisely” referred to the
> “right-leaning satirical website,” and that Facebook and Snopes have since dropped
> the claims the Bee ever trafficked in misinformation.
> 
> This latest correction, however, no longer mentions the Bee as an example of a
> far-right misinformation site that pretends to be doing satire. And it notes that
> neither Snopes nor Facebook maintain that we're misinformation.
>  — Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) June 14, 2021[3]
> 
> The partial retraction is a victory of sorts for the satirical outlet, but the
> original Times story remains up, even though it had offered the Bee as the sole
> example of “far-right misinformation” allegedly giving benevolent social media
> censors headaches.
> 
> The Bee has often found itself a target of heavy-handed response by Big Tech and
> ‘fact-checkers’ to its jokes. In September 2020, USA Today ‘fact-checked’ their
> story about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, only to conclude it was satire.
> 
> On at least two occasions, however, crackdowns followed attacks on the Bee in The
> New York Times. In April, as Dillon and his coworkers fought against the
> defamatory claim in Isaac’s article, Facebook demonetized the Bee’s page over a
> joke about rioters, for “promoting crime.”
> 
> Something similar happened in October 2020. Just four days after the Times accused
> the Bee of being a site that “capitalizes on confusion” and has a “habit of
> skirting the line between misinformation and satire,” Facebook demonetized their
> page for “inciting violence.” The culprit? A story lampooning Senator Mazie Hirono
> (D-Hawaii) with a witch-hunting joke from ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail.’

[1] https://twitter.com/SethDillon/status/1404457269950091265
[2] https://twitter.com/SethDillon/status/1404457266313580550
[3] https://twitter.com/SethDillon/status/1404457268603723779
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