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New York Times Forced To Back Down After Smearing Babylon Bee

NYT vs. Babylon Bee

The New York Times was forced to back down from targeting popular satire website the Babylon Bee after months of smearing it as ‘far-right misinformation.’

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The New York Times was forced to back down from targeting popular satire website the Babylon Bee after months of smearing it as “far-right misinformation.”

In a reply to the Babylon Bee’s demands to retract “defamatory statements” about the satire site from one of the New York Times’ March articles, the Times said it has “removed the reference to the Babylon Bee from the article and appended a correction.”

In the correction at the bottom of the article, the Times wrote, “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,” the correction concludes.

The Babylon Bee previously demanded the Times retract its “defamatory” claims about the satire website after a March article claimed the Bee is “far-right misinformation.” The article was updated a few days later to further smear the Bee for “feuding with Facebook and the fact-checking site Snopes over whether the site published misinformation or satire.”

“The New York Times is using misinformation to smear us as being a source of misinformation,” Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon said at the time, disputing the Times’ claims. “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 questions. 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.”

Now, Dillion said, the Times’ surrender is worth celebrating.

“This is huge,” he wrote. “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.”