Facebook is doing some damage-control after “fact-checkers” mistakenly flagged satirical Christian news site The Babylon Bee as “fake news.” Well, yes, that’s kind of the point of “satire.” The site apparently received a strict warning from Facebook this week after the fact-checking website Snopes deemed one of its articles “false,” PJ Media reported. Adam Ford, who runs The Babylon Bee, tweeted a screenshot Thursday of the message he received from Facebook: The article, “CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication,” was clearly humorous in nature and not meant to be taken literally.
But Facebook warned Ford that the piece “contains information disputed by (Snopes.com) an independent fact checker,” and that the Bee “will see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetize and advertised (sic.) removed” if they continue to publish similar articles. “Although it should have been obvious that the Babylon Bee piece was just a spoof of the ongoing political brouhaha over alleged news media ‘bias’ and ‘fake news,’” Snopes explained on their website, “some readers missed that aspect of the article and interpreted it literally.” It’s impossible to verify whether any readers (other than the fact-checkers at Snopes) could have possibly misinterpreted the sensational Bee piece. READ MORE
