The mainstream media has always held that one of their most important rules is to “never punch down”. But at least it led to a strange victory. It’s almost always considered bad form for say…. the most prominent Cable News organization to go after a new upstart Internet network (Oh, wait.. they did that…) or for a prominent Business publication to go after a YouTuber who made his way doing “Let’s Play” videos (Holy crap they did that too...). It should come as a surprise that The New York Times, the “Newspaper of record” for 169 years, “The Gray Lady”, would “Punch-down” and take on of all targets… The Babylon Bee. Nope, not kidding.
Oh How The Mighty Have Fallen
According to Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee, The New York Times had published an article claiming that the Babylon Bee “frequently trafficked in misinformation under the guise of satire.” Dillon explained that the article had referred to the Bee as
“a far-right misinformation site. It pointed to us—and only us—as an example of a site that misuses the satire label to protect our presence on social media sites that would otherwise ban us for spreading fake stories.”
The New York Times apparently tried to soften their complete and total mischaracterization of the satirical site, but Dillon wasn’t settling for half-measures that still maligned his company
“We objected to this pretty strongly, so [reporter Mike Isaac] 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,” Dillon added.
With Truth On Their Side, The Babylon Bee Had Victory
After several demand letters informing the Times that they would be imminently facing a defamation suit, they finally blinked and made it right.
“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,” Dillon explained.
The New York Times finally set the record straight, “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 latest Times correction runs. “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.”
Dillon took to Twitter to document his Victory, one of a type that comes much too few and far between, the maligned conservative triumphing over a mainstream media that wants them canceled. Sorry boys, no cancel culture today.
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