Babylon Bee Editor Discusses Satire: ‘We Communicate Truth to a Post-Truth Culture’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Kirk Cameron recently sat down with Kyle Mann, the editor-in-chief of Christian satire website, The Babylon Bee, to talk about satire and comedy in today’s ‘cancel culture’ environment.
Talking about the origins of the site, Mann said, “As Christians, a lot of times it feels like we live in Babylon…and that’s only become increasingly true over the past several years. We kind of thought of this idea of…writing news for Christians, writing news for believers, from this perspective that the dispatches are from Babylon.”
When asked about how he and the rest of the Babylon Bee staff tread the fine line between comedy and disrespect, he explained, “That’s definitely a spiritual struggle and we want to keep all of our writers thinking in terms of what’s a worthy target to be mocked? What’s something that’s light and silly and fun that we can mock without actually making fun of God or the Bible or Christ.”
“When I think of the culture that we’re living in today and the topics in the news…has the woke movement just been God’s gift to the Babylon Bee?” Cameron asked.
“Yes and no,” Mann answered. “It’s so hard to write jokes that haven’t come true. You know, you’re trying to satirize a woke movement that is almost parody in so many ways.
“We’re trying to use humor to communicate truth to a post-truth culture,” Mann continued. “We communicate truth, but a lot of things also are just to make us laugh and I think that’s a good thing in and of itself.”
Mann also spoke about the accusations of spreading misinformation that have been leveled at the Babylon Bee.
“It’s so crazy because left wing satire and secular satire has been out there for so long and people have always mistaken satire for real life and there was never really this blowback from media and Big Tech. It does feel like they target us because of our political and religious views,” Mann concluded.
Movieguide® has previously reported on the Babylon Bee’s struggle with censorship:
The popular Christian satire site the Babylon Bee came under fire from Big Tech and other news outlets for allegedly promoting “misinformation.”
Although Facebook has deleted posts and suspended the site’s accounts on several occasions, the Babylon Bee earned a victory after the New York Times retracted comments with similar accusations.
NYT published a correction on a March 19 article after the Babylon Bee threatened a lawsuit against NYT for describing the satire site as a “far-right misinformation site.”
Seth Dillon, the Babylon Bee’s CEO, claimed that the original report was “defamatory.”
The article in question, titled “For Political Cartoonists, the Irony Was That Facebook Didn’t Recognize Irony,” said that the site spread misinformation under cover of satire.
“In an article about Facebook’s difficulty in dealing with satire, the New York Times points to The Babylon Bee as an example of a ‘far-right misinformation site’ that ‘sometimes trafficked in misinformation under the guise of satire,’” Dillon tweeted.
The Babylon Bee sent a letter to the NYT demanding that the article’s defamatory claims be removed.
“Big update here. The [NYT] has responded to our demand letter by removing defamatory statements about us from their article. Here’s their email to our counsel notifying us of the correction,” Dillon posted to his Twitter.