Seth Dillon, Publisher of The Bablyon Bee: We Are Suing the New York Times for Defaming Us as a “Right-Wing Misinformation Site… Under the Guise of Satire”
—Ace
Yes it is time. It is time to sue them into extinction.
Yesterday our counsel sent a letter to @nytimes demanding a retraction. We took this action because their article was–and remains–defamatory.
The Times refuses to acknowledge the Babylon Bee is a satire site. They continue to claim it’s right-wing misinformation site that gets away with it because it pretends to be satire.
They must be hailed to court to explain why The Onion is not then a “left-wing misinformation site.”
The Times relies, as an objective citation, Snopes claim that the Babylon Bee isn’t really satire.
But Snopes has retracted that claim.
The New York Times is relying on the retracted claim of an incredibly partisan and unprofessional source.
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.
These mischaracterizations from the Times are nothing new. Previously, Times reporter Kevin Roose wrote a defamatory piece that claimed we “capitalize on confusion” and that we have a “habit of skirting the line between misinformation and satire,” whatever that means.
But they know better. In fact, Roose himself contradicted the title of his own piece by acknowledging in his conclusion that, “The Babylon Bee is not a covert disinformation operation disguised as a right-wing satire site, and is in fact trying to do comedy.”
For better or worse, the NY Times is considered a “reliable source.” We cannot stand idly by as they act with malice to misrepresent us in ways that jeopardize our business.
Here’s Seth Dillon’s previous attempts to argue rationally with the New York Times about its continuing defamation.
They refused, preferring to serve as the attack dogs of the DNC, so it’s time for the lawyers.
This is going on even as the New York Times’ motion for dismissal of Project Veritas’ defamation lawsuit was rejected — and now they’ve filed a motion to stay discovery, because they really, really, really do not want people discovering their internal communications about how best to defame conservatives.
I gotta admit — Trump was right. It’s time to “open these media people up” to defamation lawsuits.
And, when we retake Congress and the White House, it’s time to follow Clarence Thomas’ suggestion and legislatively repeal the media’s protection against defamation. The liberal Supreme Court made that up, but at least, at the time, the media did usually try to be honest.
Today’s media is no better than Nick Denton’s old Gawker empire (including the “Defamer” blog!), but with a nasty partisan edge.
They are no different than any other highly partisan smear merchant, and should have no special protections against defamation that aren’t available to the man in the street.
And yes, Congress can pass rules in a matter the Supreme Court has ruled upon. They are co-equal branches. It is bulletproof if Congress doesn’t quite negate the Supreme Court’s made-up protection against defamation, but “clarifies” it with a series of rules to determine if a media organization is really behaving like a neutral, objective reporter in a given case.
Such as asking if it treats similarly-situated subjects similarly.
For example, if the New York Times does not treat the Babylon Bee similarly to the Onion, it is not acting as a neutral and objective reporter, but a partisan actor, and therefore, no special defenses against defamation are open to it.
Even if the Supreme Court insists that the media must have some kind of protection against defamation in matters of public interest, they cannot claim that the specifics of the protection they made up to protect the times are any more constitutionally authoritative than rules the co-equal branch of Congress makes up to achieve the same goal, but in a somewhat different way.
In fact, you know, laws made by Congress are supposed to trump the made-up “laws” of the Court.
By the Way: The filthy game the New York Times is playing here — and their nasty Millennials know they’re playing this game — is that if they get enough “reliable sources” to tag a person or organization as “misinformation,” the next step is getting social media monopolies to (selectively) execute their supposed policy against “misinformation” and ban that person or organization from social media.
That’s why leftwing “researchers” are constantly pitching Internet Dossiers proving this guy or that guy is “misinformation” or “spreading harmful memes.” They get the New York Times to amplify the claim, to smear some supposed credibility over it.
Next step? Petitioning Google, YouTube, Twitter, FaceBook, Patreon and PayPal to eradicate the blasphemer and take away his right to speak publicly with a willing audience.
That is the game.
It is time to end the game. It is time to destroy the players.
