![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2017\/12\/800px-Brownsville_Herald_Newspaper.jpg\")
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By \u201cthe Bee,\u201d I mean, for those for whom it\u2019s escaped their notice, the Babylon Bee<\/a>, a satirical site which, according to Wikipedia<\/a>, was launched in 2016.\u00a0 It\u2019s has it its sights items related to evangelical Christianity, targeting Prosperity Gospel hucksters such as Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copland,\u00a0 and Creflo Dollar (\u201cJoel Osteen, Benny Hinn To Speak At First Annual HeresyCon<\/a>\u201c, \u201cCreflo Dollar Debuts New Pulpit Made Entirely Of Hundred Dollar Bills<\/a>\u201c, etc.), denim-skirt-wearing Independent Baptists (\u201cNike Releases Floor-Length Denim Basketball Skirt For Female Baptist Athletes<\/a>\u201c), underpaid youth pastors (\u201cBible College To Offer Course On Panhandling For Future Youth Pastors<\/a>\u201c) and over-hip worship leaders (\u201cWorship Leader Rushed To Hospital After Face Gets Stuck In Passionate Expression<\/a>\u201d and \u201cWorship Leaders With Ripped Jeans Show Significantly Higher Levels Of Authenticity, Study Finds<\/a>\u201c), Jordan Peterson (\u201cJordan Peterson Granted Honorary Christian Status<\/a>\u201d and \u201cJordan Peterson, Marie Kondo To Host New Show \u2018Get Your Bloody Darn House In Order\u2019<\/a>\u201c) and progressive Christians (\u201cGideons Announce Daring Plan To Sneak Bibles Into Progressive Churches<\/a>\u201d and \u201cNew Progressive Bible Prints All References To Pride In Rainbow Colors<\/a>\u201c), to list a few topics.\u00a0 They\u2019re not above skewering Trump and, more specifically, his evangelical supporters (\u201cAs Sign Of Reverence, Evangelical Leaders To Begin Writing President\u2019s Name As \u2018Tr-mp\u2019<\/a>\u201d and \u201cTrump Spends Afternoon Shouting From White House Balcony During Twitter Outage<\/a>\u201c) as well as plenty of targets among the Democrats such as Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, Pelosi, etc.<\/p>\n And one of their favorite running jokes is the perpetual cheerfulness of Chick-Fil-A employees, as exemplified by the classic \u201cMan Robbing Chick-Fil-A Impressed By Level Of Customer Service<\/a>\u201c, which begins<\/p>\n A man robbing the Chick-Fil-A restaurant on Mission Gorge Road Friday afternoon admitted afterward he was \u201cpretty impressed\u201d by the level of customer service he experienced while cleaning out the registers of cash.<\/p>\n The man barged into the restaurant with a handgun and fired a warning shot into the air, causing terrified customers to dive for cover. Strangely, however, Chick-Fil-A workers simply asked if they could help him and cleaned up the mess he\u2019d made. \u201cIt\u2019s no trouble sir\u2014it\u2019s our pleasure,\u201d they insisted to the baffled criminal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So it was no surprise that when Georgia State Representative Erica Thomas claimed that a white man told her to \u201cgo back where she came from\u201d before subsequently recanting (and, if the eyewitness is correct, she herself was the one uttering those words, to the Cuban-ethnicity man \u2013 see this link<\/a> which I selected for its telling of the facts and and its appearance at the top of the search results, rather than for its point of view), the Bee satirized the event<\/a> by retelling the story with a few modifications and with the characteristic Chick-Fil-A elements:<\/p>\n In light of the information, Thomas walked back her claim a bit. \u201cHe definitely said something to me. I initially thought it was the \u2018go back to your country\u2019 thing, but now that I think about it, it may have been \u2018my pleasure.'\u201d<\/p>\n Even after the clarification, the Chick-fil-A employee still wrote Thomas an apology letter for any misunderstanding, and the restaurant manager gave her coupons for a week\u2019s worth of free chicken biscuits.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Was it the most clever piece they\u2019d ever written?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 It\u2019s in the nature of these sorts of sites that sometimes the articles give you a nice laugh and sometimes they\u2019re \u201cmeh\u201d \u2013 regardless of whether they skewer a target that justly deserves skewering or not.\u00a0 But it\u2019s indisputably satire.<\/p>\n But that didn\u2019t stop Snopes from \u201cfact-checking\u201d it \u2014 something they\u2019ve done on multiple prior occasions, always with the claim that their readers are asking then to explain to them whether the claim is true or not.<\/p>\n Now, to be fair, the Bee isn\u2019t the only satire site which Snopes has \u201cfact checked.\u201d\u00a0 They \u201cfact checked\u201d the statement that Russian military plans performed a flyover during the DC July 4 parade<\/a>, which originated in an article at the \u201cBorowitz Report\u201d satire site, on July 5th, as well as, on June 24, a statement from the Borowitz Facebook page<\/a>, and a few similar instances in prior years.\u00a0 But their \u201cfact checking\u201d against the Bee has been persistent, with six instances this year, and repeated instances in prior years, beginning with a \u201cfact check\u201d on May 30, 2017<\/a>, about Katy Perry, in which it simply said that the article was satire.\u00a0 Harmless?\u00a0 No big deal?<\/p>\n Actually, this is not harmless, as the Bee depends on the ability to advertise via Facebook for its revenue, and has enlisted Snopes to flag articles and sites as promoting \u201cfake news\u201d with the objective of preventing those sites from advertising\/distributing their content on Facebook.\u00a0 In March of last year<\/a>, an article so far removed from reality (that CNN \u201cspins\u201d its news in literal washing machines) as to reader any claims that they were responding to reader queries, thoroughly implausible, was classified as \u201cfalse\u201d and the site received a notification from Facebook that they would be subject to this crackdown for any further offense.\u00a0 (Facebook subsequently backed down.)<\/p>\n Which brings us to Snope\u2019s latest \u201cfact check\u201d article<\/a>, in which they reach far beyond a bland \u201cthis is actually satire\u201d to very direct and pointed criticism of the Bee.\u00a0 As Chrissy Clark at The Federalist writes<\/a>,<\/p>\n The subhead of the Snopes \u201cfact-check\u201d reads, \u201cWe\u2019re not sure if fanning the flames of controversy and muddying the details of a news story classify an article as \u2018satire.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Next, Snopes said the Babylon Bee made up a fictionalized story about a real-life news event instead of making a satirical point.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile this real-world incident stirred up a good amount of online anger, it wasn\u2019t quite outrageous enough for the entertainment website Babylon Bee,\u201d Snopes said. \u201cIn an apparent attempt to maximize the online indignation, this website published a fictionalized version of the story, changing the location to Chick-fil-A, a fast-food restaurant known for its CEO\u2019s opposition to same-sex marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n Snopes called the satirical article, which obviously pokes fun at a real life event, a fictionalized version of the story. \u201cThe Babylon Bee has tried to fool readers with its brand of satire in the past,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n Demonstrating a lack of objectivity, the article continued, calling the Babylon Bee a \u201cruse,\u201d which literally means \u201can action intended to deceive someone.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And in case you wonder why I am not quoting from Snopes directly, it\u2019s because in the meantime the site removed all of this inflammatory language.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, The Bee has written a message to its subscribers (reprinted at Hot Air<\/a>) that says, in part,<\/p>\n For better or worse, the media, the public, and social networks all look to Snopes for authoritative answers. By lumping us in with fake news and questioning whether we really qualify as satire, Snopes appears to be actively engaged in an effort to discredit and deplatform us. While we wish it wasn\u2019t necessary, we have retained a law firm to represent us in this matter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And the Bee is hardly being oversensitive; it is the nature of the media business that for Snopes to have been given this level of power over news and entertainment outlets means that this is no petty squabble.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know why Snopes is behaving this way, given that they \u201cfact check\u201d articles such as the above-mentioned hundred-dollar-bill pulpit<\/a>, as well as the \u201cwashing machine\u201d article<\/a> which, again, is so clearly fictional that it is simply not credible that, as Snopes claimed, some readers \u201cinterpreted it literally.\u201d\u00a0 (Perhaps some readers claimed to have been taken in, in order to spur Snopes to write the story?)<\/p>\n So, again, why Snopes is doing this, whether one of their writers\/editors has it in for the Bee, and is intentionally abusing their fact-checker status, or whether they simply don\u2019t recognize the impact of what they do, I can\u2019t say.\u00a0 At any rate, it makes it clear that the convenience of platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and the ability they provide for writers and creators to promote and monetize their work, come at a cost.<\/p>\n And, come to think of it, I suppose I should finally set up that Bee subscription to give them more money than what they earn off ad revenue.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Image:\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Brownsville_Herald_Newspaper.jpg; By Dontbesogullible (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/span><\/p>\n Yes, I\u2019m lazy.\u00a0 I need an image and also need to click \u201cpublish\u201d before picking my son up from band, so am less than keen on finding a Snopes, Bee, or fake-news themed image.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By \u201cthe Bee,\u201d I mean, for those for whom it\u2019s escaped their notice, the Babylon Bee, a satirical site which, according to Wikipedia, was launched in 2016.\u00a0 It\u2019s has it its sights items related to evangelical Christianity, targeting Prosperity Gospel hucksters such as Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copland,\u00a0 and Creflo Dollar (\u201cJoel Osteen, Benny Hinn To […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[911,1280,666,1283],"class_list":["post-15023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-babylon-bee","tag-face-news","tag-facebook","tag-snopes"],"yoast_head":"\n