New York Times Admits Babylon Bee is ‘Satire,’ Not ‘Misinformation,’ After Legal Threat
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The New York Times corrected a story referring to the satirical Babylon Bee website as “misinformation” after the site’s operators threatened legal action, calling the description “imprecise.”
“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,” the paper noted in a correction appended to the story. “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.”
The correction, dated June 10, arrived nearly three months after the March 19 story’s publication. Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon highlighted a message on Twitter on Monday that Times attorney Dana Green sent the publication regarding the removal in which Green said the paper had “carefully reviewed” a letter from the website demanding the correction. In addition to adding the correction, Green said, the paper had removed a reference to it.
The story, authored by the Times’ Mike Isaac, centered on political cartoons and originally said called the Babylon Bee “a right-leaning site” that “frequently trafficked in misinformation under the guise of satire.” As of Monday, top headlines on the site — which began in 2016 as a conservative alternative to The Onion — included “Surefire Ways to Win an Argument With Your Wife,” along with “Dems Shocked, Disappointed to Learn the New Israeli Prime Minister Will Still be a Jew.”
Big update here. The @nytimes has responded to our demand letter by removing defamatory statements about us from their article. Here’s their email to our counsel notifying us of the correction. https://t.co/lv0eYo6NzK pic.twitter.com/OLi5KzMzej
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) June 14, 2021
“This is huge,” Dillon wrote in a follow-up on Twitter. “The NY Times was using misinformation to smear us as being a source of it. That’s not merely ironic; it’s malicious. 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.”
