The progressives who run Snopes, a so-called “fact checking” website, don’t seem to understand the difference between fake news and satire.
Liberals cheer when Saturday Night Live or Comedy Central satirize news concerning conservatives, especially President Trump. But Snopes recently criticized the Babylon Bee – a Christian satire site – because it was too close to the truth.
On July 22, the Babylon Bee had a story about a Georgia state legislator who accused an employee of Chick-fil-A (also a Christian company) of telling her, “Go back to your country.” Later, it was discovered the employee actually said, “My pleasure.” This was mostly true and Snopes responded by that they were unsure that “muddying the details” of a news story was “satire.”
What?
This is what late-night talk shows, SNL, the Onion and others do all the time. They take a news item and use it to ridicule Trump with details that are obviously satire. Progressives can use satire but Christians cannot, according to this worldview.
Snopes amended their story and removed on of the headlines. In an editorial, Snopes said they didn’t aim to imply deceptive intent on the part of Babylon Bee.
The Babylon Bee has reportedly hired an attorney to look into this. They don’t want to be labeled “fake news” – a derogatory term – when they are clearly dealing in political satire.
Snopes fact-checked Babylon Bee on several satires in the past, including:
- A story that claimed U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, failed during an appearance on The Price Is Right because she kept saying, “everything is free;
- A piece about CNN buying a giant-sized washer to “spin news”;
- A story concerning Veggie Tales, a Christian children’s show that was adding a new character called “Cannabis Carl.”
Facebook warned the Babylon Bee about the CNN story but Facebook later apologized. Apparently, some powerful people on the left don’t like being satirized. This just confirms that progressives have a double standard when it comes to fair play and free speech.