The Babylon Bee

Submission 12,646

About

Babylon Bee is a satirical news site which ironically describes itself as "the world's best satire site, totally inerrant in all its truth claims." As of August 2019, owner Seth Dillon serves as the site's CEO and Kyle Mann serves as editor in chief. According to their About page, the site focuses on writing "satire about Christian stuff, political stuff, and everyday life."

History

On March 1st, 2016, The Babylon Bee^[1] was launched by founder Adam Ford. On May 22nd, 2018, Ford published a post on his personal blog Adam4d^[2] announcing he sold the website approximately one month prior to "Christian entrepreneur" Seth Dillon, but that "it's still in good hands." As of late August 2019, the official Babylon Bee Facebook^[4] page has over 583,000 likes and the @TheBabylonBee^[5] Twitter feed has more than 232,000 followers.

Highlights

Online Presence

On Reddit, screenshots of headlines from The Babylon Bee frequently reach the front page of the /r/The_Donald subreddit (shown below).

Controversies

Feud With Snopes

On March 1st, 2018, Babylon Bee^[3] published an article titled "CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication." That day, Snopes^[9] published a fact-check article titled "Did CNN Purchase an Industrial-Sized Washing Machine to Spin News?"
Also on March 1st, former Babylon Bee owner Adam Ford tweeted^[6] a screenshot of a Facebook notification claiming that Snopes had disputed the article after it had been posted on the official Babylon Bee Facebook page, warning that "repeated offenders will see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetize and advertised removed" (shown below).

The following day, the conservative news site The Daily Caller^[7] published an article about the controversy, which included a statement from Facebook apologizing for the mistake:

"There’s a difference between false news and satire. This was a mistake and should not have been rated false in our system. It’s since been corrected and won’t count against the domain in any way."

On July 22nd, 2019, The Babylon Bee published an article titled "Georgia Lawmaker Claims Chick-Fil-A Employee Told Her To Go Back To Her Country, Later Clarifies He Actually Said 'My Pleasure'." On July 24th, Snopes^[10] published a fact check article titled "Did a Georgia Lawmaker Claim a Chick-fil-A Employee Told Her to Go Back to Her Country?," which suggested that the satirical Babylon Bee article was intentionally deceptive. That day, Ford tweeted a thread about the article, which criticized Snopes' portrayal of the article (shown below).

Thread:So snopes</a> fact-checked <a href="https://twitter.com/TheBabylonBee?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">TheBabylonBee again. But this time it's particularly egregious and, well, kind of disturbing. And I'd like to talk about it. Pack a lunch cuz this'll be a long one.First off, here's their ridiculous article: https://t.co/SBugStUnfq
— Adam Ford (@Adam4d) July 25, 2019

Following the Twitter thread, the Snopes article was edited "for tone and clarity," removing some of the language criticized by Ford. On August 3rd, The New York Times published an article about the feud titled "Satire or Deceit? Christian Humor Site Feuds With Snopes." On August 16th, Snopes^[11] published an announcement about a new "labeled satire" rating on the site, which replaced ratings for Babylon Bee articles that had previously been labeled "false." On August 21st, The Babylon Bee^[12] published an article titled "Concerning Survey Finds Too Many People Believe Snopes Is A Legitimate Fact-Checking Website" (shown below).

As of late August 2019, 33 articles have been published with the tag "babylon bee" on Snopes.^[8]

Trump Retweet

On October 15th, 2020, Donald Trump retweeted a Babylon Bee article titled "Twitter Shuts Down Entire Network To Slow Spread Of Negative Biden News," apparently not understanding it was a satirical piece (Twitter was briefly down the previous day).^[13]