The New York Times was forced to answer a demand letter by the Babylon Bee, the political satire publication after months of a smear campaign where the NYT framed The Babylon Bee as an “extreme far-right” publication. The New York Times informed that it removed the information about the media outlet.
Seth Dillon, CEO of the Babylon Bee, tweeted about the statement, writing “Big update here. The New York Times has responded to our demand letter by removing defamatory statements about us from their article…” He then continued, “Originally, the article said we were 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.”
“This is huge. 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.” He concluded.
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
In that sense, The New York Times removed the reference to the Babylon Bee from the article and added a correction. At the end of the article, the outlet wrote: “An earlier version of this article vaguely referred to Babylon Bee, a satirical right-wing website, and a controversy regarding Facebook’s handling of its content.”
This June, the satire site asked the New York Times to issue a retraction on the comments referring to the Babylon Bee as a far-right misinformation website. All of this resulted from a March 19th article on big tech censorship that made satire political commentary a target for leftist content censorship.
On that NYT article, the newspaper’s technology correspondent Mike Isaac, referred to the Babylon Bee as “far-right disinformation,” and said that it is hiding false comments under the guise of “satire” to escape false speech. Isaac’s poignant judgement has been proven false.
