babylon bee
==
mirror of onion? jon stewart etc?
===
an 2 26
A recent meeting of President Donald Trump's Religious Liberty Commission rapidly devolved into a shouting match between commission members over the issue of antisemitism.
That's according to a Tuesday article by MS NOW's Ja'han Jones, who wrote that several conservative Christian members of the commission got into a "fit of infighting" when discussing antisemitism on college campuses. Commission members Carrie Prejean Boller (who was Miss California U.S.A. in 2009) and Seth Dillon — who is the CEO of conservative satire site The Babylon Bee — battled over far-right commentator Tucker Carlson and whether MAGA influencer Candace Owens is antisemitic.
"I have not heard one thing out of her mouth that I would say is antisemitic," Boller said of Owens, despite Owens being named "Antisemite of the Year" in 2024 by advocacy group StopAntisemitism.
Boller also argued loudly with several Jewish commission members over the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, the latter of which is typically defined by support for the modern state of Israel (though it is also seen as a coded attack on Jewish people). Boller, who is Catholic, proclaimed "Catholics do not embrace Zionism," and garnered boos from the crowd when condemning Islamophobia.
Now, Boller is facing calls from within the MAGA world to either resign for the commission, or for her to be removed if she refused to step down. This includes far-right commentator Laura Loomer (known as Trump's informal "loyalty enforcer") who called Boller's comments "disgraceful."
"The Trump administration should not reward individuals who openly spread anti-Jewish propaganda," Loomer tweeted.
Trump convened the Religious Liberty Commission last year, whose members include Texas Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick (R) and Dr. Phil McGraw, as well as former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Rev. Franklin Graham, Pastor Paula White and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, among others. Their commission itself is set to disband on July 4 of this year, unless Trump chooses to extend it. Jones wrote that given the outburst at its latest meeting, the commission may likely sunset this summer.
"That MAGA world is engaged in this kind of circular firing squad over antisemitism is no surprise and, one might argue, the natural outcome for a political movement fueled by bigotry of varying sorts," Jones wrote.
---
---
yt grayzone 9 20 25
kirk horowitz, ackman; trump afraind of bibi canary bds
tampa pro gaza comedian vs bad hombre lost debate
senate of not prez
billionaire Bill Ackman convened stormy Israel ‘intervention’ with Charlie Kirk, sources say
Max Blumenthal·September 15, 2025
A month before Charlie Kirk’s killing, billionaire pro-Israel moneyman Bill Ackman arranged an intervention in the Hamptons during which sources say he and others “hammered” Kirk for the conservative leader’s growing criticism of Israeli influence in Washington. Kirk came away fretting about Israeli “blackmail,” sources say, as he contemplated a Catholic conversion.
On September 11, one day after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, billionaire pro-Israel moneyman Bill Ackman took to Twitter/X to trumpet his relationship with the late conservative operative. “I feel incredibly privileged to have spent a day and shared a meal with @charliekirk11 this summer. He was a giant of a man.”
The Grayzone has spoken to five people with intimate knowledge of Kirk’s meeting with Ackman, which was held in early August. According to one source, Kirk was left upset after the gathering turned into an “intervention” where he was “hammered” for his increasingly skeptical views on the US special relationship with Israel, and for platforming prominent conservative critics of Israel at his TPUSA events.
Since publishing this report, The Grayzone has learned from one attendee of the Hamptons event that Ackman convened the influencers under the auspices of a discussion about Zohran Mamdani and the supposed threat he posed to the West if elected mayor of New York. But the meeting went off the rails when Ackman personally confronted Kirk about his views on Israel. The public face of UK Lawyers for Israel, Natasha Hausdorff, joined in the argument, and began “screaming” at Kirk, according to the attendee.
When his hosts presented him with a detailed list of every offense he supposedly committed against Israel, Kirk was “horrified,” said one person. Ackman also allegedly demanded Kirk rescind his invitation for Tucker Carlson to speak at his upcoming America Fest 2025 in December.
“The whole thing was a disaster,” said an attendee.
The Grayzone reported on September 12, citing a longtime associate of Kirk, that Netanyahu had offered to organize a massive infusion of pro-Israel money into TPUSA, and that Kirk refused. Another longtime friend of Kirk has told The Grayzone that the conservative activist also rejected an offer Netanyahu delivered two weeks before his death to meet with him in Jerusalem.
Kirk, according to one person with inside knowledge of the meeting with Ackman, said he left feeling as though he’d been subjected to “blackmail.”
In a series of text messages with The Grayzone, Ackman described these account of his meeting with Kirk as “totally false.” He pledged to release a public statement providing his own account of the event, but refused The Grayzone’s request for clarification or further details. He would not accept phone calls from this reporter.
“I think I can easily put this to bed,” Ackman promised, “I have receipts as they say.” He did not abide when asked to provide the so-called “receipts.”
In an apparent bid to reinforce the pro-Israel tone at the Hamptons meeting, Ackman hosted a coterie of pro-Israel operatives and conservative influencers at the off-the-record engagement. One was Instagram influencer Xaviaer DuRousseau of Prager U.
Reached by phone by The Grayzone, DuRousseau sounded flustered when asked about his presence at the meeting. He repeatedly demanded to know how this reporter obtained his number, and eventually hung up, refusing to answer questions about the event.
Several Instagram posts by DuRousseau show him and his friend, conservative influencer Emily Wilson, in the Hamptons on August 8 outside Topping Rose House, a posh hotel and restaurant in Bridgehampton, New York.
Two weeks after the meeting, DeRousseau was reportedly junketed on an all-expenses-paid trip by the Israeli government to visit a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “aid” hub guarded by the IDF on the Gaza frontier. There, he recorded an Instagram video denying that the population of the besieged Gaza Strip was experiencing a famine.
The Grayzone received a similarly agitated response from Wilson, known online as Emily Saves America. Following a phone call and exchange of text messages in which this reporter asked her numerous times about her attendance of the meeting in the Hamptons, Wilson refused to comment. Instagram photos place her in the Hamptons at the same time as DuRousseau.
CJ Pearson, a leading youth coordinator for the Republican National Committee, immediately referred The Grayzone to his communications director when asked if he attended the Hamptons gathering.
The strong-arm tactics of the pro-Israel billionaires who helped fuel the growth of TPUSA were said to have contributed to Kirk’s alienation with evangelical Christianity, which emphasizes uncritical support for Israel as a bedrock principle. Several sources with access to Kirk said he had begun attending Catholic mass with his wife, Erika, and was considering a conversion before his death.
Bree Solsdadt, a Catholic Twitter/X influencer, has publicly corroborated this account of Kirk’s religious realignment. Kirk’s friend, the podcaster and former TPUSA personality Candace Owens, also alluded to the shift when she reflected that he was undergoing a “spiritual transformation” before his death.
Israel-centric influencer summit in the Hamptons
The Grayzone has obtained a partial list of attendees alleged to have been in attendance at the Bridgehampton meeting convened by Ackman this August. They include:
Seth Dillon – Dillion is the CEO of Babylon Bee, the conservative answer to the liberal The Onion satire outlet. Dillon and his crew have derisively mocked famine-stricken Palestinians and their supporters in the West, since Israel’s slash-and-burn campaign began in the besieged Gaza Strip. An evangelical Christian with Jewish heritage, he has claimed, “I did not cease having Ashkenazi blood when I put my faith in Jesus Christ (also a Jew).” Dillon did not answer calls from The Grayzone.
Xaviaer DuRousseau – DuRousseau is employed by Prager U, the premier right-wing “edu-tainment” hub targeting the minds of American youth. His boss, Marissa Streit, is a veteran of the Israeli army’s Unit 8200 cyber-spying division. A Black self-described former progressive, DuRousseau now appears firmly in the pocket of right-wing Zionist forces. During his Israeli government-funded visit to a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “aid” hub inside Gaza, DuRousseau falsely claimed the United Nations and Hamas were to blame for the hunger sweeping the local population. “If I were Israel, I wouldn’t even provide matching socks to Gaza, but here’s all the aid that y’all claim doesn’t exist,” he said in an Instagram video filmed in front of boxes of aid blocked from entering Gaza. “Instead of Hamas distributing the ramen noodles,” DuRousseau continued, “their leaders are eating it all and that’s why they’re on Ozempic.”
DuRousseau vigorously defended his close friend, podcaster Emily Wilson, after she stated that “if everyone in the state [of Alabama]” wanted the return of chattel slavery, “go ahead, why do I give a shit?”
Emily Wilson aka Emily Saves America– Wilson is a Los Angeles-based self-described libertarian podcaster and social media influencer with over 500,000 followers on Instagram. On September 9, she recalled on Twitter/X how “a HUGE black guy” robbed her when she was 13. “I hate to say it but things like that just change the way you see certain people. After that I always thought, ‘oh, you guys just hate me,’” she reflected. This month, she and DuRousseau recorded a
in which they framed pro-Palestine activist Greta Thunberg’s hairstyle as evidence of her being “slow and short bus.”
“I don’t hang out with anyone really less attractive than me,” Wilson stated in a separate appearance.
Arynne Wexler – A former Goldman Sachs trader seeking cachet in the world of online influencers, Wexler is a vociferously Zionist, self-described “non-lib girl in a crazylib world.” In an interview with pro-Israel podcaster Dave Rubin, Wexler
that “we need to bring bullying back” to enforce social norms, crack down on conspiracy theories, and stop the rise of antisemitism. Wexler has praised Ackman’s pro-Israel activism on multiple occasions. She did not answer calls from The Grayzone.
Natasha Hausdorff – The legal director of Zionist advocacy group UK Lawyers for Israel, Hausdorff is arguably the best-known figure associated with the organization. She was described in one headline by Israel’s most widely-read newspaper, the Adelson-owned Israel Hayom, as “the British attorney who fights Israel’s wars.”
Nate Friedman – Friedman is a young ultra-Zionist influencer best known for New York City man-on-the-street confrontations with Palestine solidarity activists, whom he’s accused of being paid protesters.
Ory Rinat – Rinat was the former
to Jared Kushner, the Trump son-in-law and advisor, before moving on to serve as White House chief digital officer during Trump’s first term. A Jewish pro-Israel operative said to have close ties Netanyahu’s government, Rinat now serves as CEO of Urban Legend, a PR firm which commands “an army of 700 social media influencers who command varying degrees of allegiance from audiences that collectively number in the tens of millions,” according to Wired.
CJ Pearson – The chair of the Republican National Committee’s Youth Advisory Council, Pearson appeared in photos in the Hamptons alongside Wilson and DeRousseau. The Grayzone is awaiting further information from Pearson’s communications director.
CJ Pearson (left) with Emily Wilson, Xavaier DeRousseau, and an unknown person in the Hamptons
Bill Ackman’s war
As The Grayzone reported on September 12, Kirk was besieged with angry calls and messages from pro-Israel donors to his organization following TPUSA’s Student Action Summit this July in Tampa, Florida. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also phoned him, according to a longtime friend of Kirk, and offered to orchestrate a massive infusion of pro-Israel money into his organization.
A longtime friend of Kirk told The Grayzone the mounting pressure had left him “angry” and “frightened.”
Kirk vented about the pro-Israel intimidation campaign in an August 6 discussion with Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News host who was also growing more critical of Israeli influence in Washington.
“It’s all of the sudden, ‘Oh, Charlie: he’s no longer with us.’ Wait a second—what does ‘with us’ mean, exactly? I’m an American, okay? I represent this country,” Kirk
.
“The more that you guys privately and publicly call our character into question—which is not isolated, it would be one thing if it were just one text, or two texts; it is dozens of texts—then we start to say, ‘whoa, hold the boat here,’” Kirk continued. “To be fair, some really good Jewish friends say, ‘that’s not all of us’… But these are leaders here. These are stakeholders.”
He went on: “I have less ability… to criticize the Israeli government than actual Israelis do. And that’s really, really weird.”
Kirk delivered his comments around the same time as the tumultuous meeting in the Hamptons with Ackman and the crew of pro-Israel influencers.
A month earlier, Kirk had opened the stage at his TPUSA Student Action Summit for a cathartic outpouring of frustration and rage about Israel’s political hammerlock on the Trump administration. At the conference, speakers from Carlson and
to the anti-Zionist Jewish comedian Dave Smith slammed Israel’s blood-soaked assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, branded Jeffrey Epstein as an Israeli intelligence asset, and openly taunted Zionist billionaires like Ackman for “getting away with scams” despite having “no actual skills.”
The mockery by Carlson was particularly galling for Ackman. One day after TPUSA’s conference, Ackman staged a 4,000 word Twitter/X meltdown defending his financial acumen, while insisting that he earned his vast fortune because, “I inherited good genes.”
In fact, the 59-year-old manager of the Pershing Square Capital hedge fund had presided over a precipitous decline in his own personal fortune through a series of bad bets. Between 2015 and 2018, amid a bull market, Ackman’s fund tallied embarrassingly negative returns that cost him an eye-popping $12 billion in losses. His
to short the multi-level marketing company Herbalife backfired, resulting in a devastating squeeze that cost him heavily. Ackman’s financial mishaps forced him to slash one fifth of his staff in 2018.
The billionaire also took issue with Carlson’s contention that he had been part of convicted sex offender and late Zionist financier Jeffrey Epstein’s “constellation of people.” Yet Carlson’s remarks were grounded in fact. Indeed, Ackman’s wife, the celebrity Israeli designer Neri Oxman, had gifted an artistic orb to Epstein after he plowed $125,000 in donations into her Media Lab at MIT. She was invited to lunch with Epstein on several occasions, according to the Boston Globe, and complied with MIT’s requirement to keep her gift to Epstein confidential.
Ackman has significantly elevated his public profile by leading fellow Zionist billionaires in a ruthless crackdown on post-October 7 Palestine solidarity activism in the US. By leveraging his fortune, Ackman helped dislodge the political scientist Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University, his alma mater, accusing her of adopting an insufficiently draconian policy toward students protesting Israel’s assault on Gaza.
After weeks of pummeling from Ackman, GOP members of Congress, and pro-Israel media, Gay finally quit when conservative activists produced evidence that she had plagiarized in her academic writing. While Ackman claimed victory, he howled with indignation when Business Insider returned the favor with a detailed article which documented multiple cases of plagiarism by his own wife, the designer Oxman. According to the outlet, Oxman “stole sentences and whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, other scholars and technical documents in her academic writing.”
Ackman responded by announcing that he would fund a plagiarism review of every MIT faculty member. He also delivered a 77-page lawsuit threat to Axel Springer, the publisher of Business Insider, accusing them of publishing claims “designed to cause her harm, principally because the reporters do not like me, my support for Israel, and my advocacy.” He quickly dropped the lawsuit, however, claiming he did so because Springer is “an important advocate against antisemitism.”
In May 2024, the Washington Post revealed Ackman as a leading member of a Whatsapp group of 50 ultra-wealthy Zionists coordinating counterinsurgency-style actions against student anti-genocide protesters at Columbia University.
According to the report, the millionaire cabal sought to buy off Black celebrities as propaganda puppets and dangled bribes before New York City Mayor Eric Adams to deploy the NYPD against student protesters. “Some members also offered to pay for private investigators to assist New York police in handling the protests, the chat log shows — an offer a member of the group reported in the chat that Adams accepted,” the Post reported.
This June 14, as Israel reeled at the Iranian response to its unprovoked assault days earlier, Ackman launched his next campaign: “@Israel needs our help to destroy Iran’s nuclear threat to the world…” the hedge funder declared on Twitter. “Israel does not have the equipment and armaments to complete the job. We do, and it does not require boots on the ground.”
Multiple sources, including a Trump administration official, have revealed to The Grayzone that Kirk personally visited Trump inside the White House to lobby him against attacking Iran. Trump “roared” at Kirk, one said, and shut down the conversation.
A month later, Kirk allowed the simmering rage within the conservative grassroots over Israel’s stranglehold on Washington to pour out at his TPUSA summit. Soon after, he was summoned to the Hamptons for a face-to-face with one of Netanyahu’s most influential allies in the US. Before Ackman and a cast of avaricious young influencers under Israel’s sway, he defied the billionaire power broker, then returned home to prepare for what would be his final speaking tour.
Following Kirk’s killing, Ackman ponied up a $1 million payout for anyone who provided information leading the capture of the shooter. That money may wind up with the father of the suspect, Tyler Robinson, who reportedly turned him in.
---
---
mma 5 23
despite once claiming that “Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world,” CEO Elon Musk is using the site to amplify dangerous conspiracy theories and right-wing talking points. In just the last few days, Musk has peddled conspiracy theories about a mass shooting in Allen, Texas, fearmongered about migrants, and seemingly suggested that white people are being discriminated against.
After a gunman in Allen, Texas, killed eight people and injured seven last weekend, Musk followed the lead of right-wing media, undermining reporting that the shooter expressed neo-Nazi beliefs. In the days after the shooting, Musk tweeted, “this is either the weirdest story ever or a very bad psyop” and seemingly expressed doubt about reported connections to far-right ideology. (He did so without providing any evidence and disregarding multiple reports from research centers and outlets that confirmed the shooter had expressed neo-Nazi beliefs online.)
Musk has a history of flirting with bad actors and dangerous content on Twitter; he has previously amplified and seemingly given credence to conspiracy theories, boosted a QAnon influencer at least two dozen times, and catered to right-wing accounts that promote bigotry, extremism, and misinformation. And in recent days, he has done more of the same.
Here are a few examples of Musk amplifying and engaging with right-wing users and misinformation within the last few days.
Musk has engaged with right-wing figures to fearmonger and push anti-immigrant rhetoric
This week, Musk has engaged with multiple right-wing media figures about immigration, seemingly agreeing with Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk that “America is being invaded” by migrants and responding to anti-immigrant Fox News reporter Bill Melugin’s fearmongering tweets with “Wow.” After Collin Rugg, co-founder of conservative site Trending Politics, wrote that the end of Title 42 will lead to “an invasion along the southern border,” Musk responded, “This is next-level!” Musk also ostensibly agreed with right-wing account End Wokeness after it bashed the Biden administration for its immigration and other policies, responding with “!!”
Musk is engaging with dangerous rhetoric that is evocative of the white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. Anti-immigrant “invasion” language has previously contributed to real-life incidents of violence, including the 2019 El Paso, Texas, shooting where 22 people were killed by a shooter who expressed similar anti-immigrant beliefs. Additionally, the Biden administration has already announced plans to further secure the southern border after Title 42 ends, and blaming the current White House for a broken immigration system is disingenuous, as the GOP has and continues to obstruct immigration reform policies.
Musk has engaged — and seemingly agreed — with far-right users who claim that white people are being discriminated against
After Jordan Neely was held in a chokehold on a New York City subway and later died, some on the far right have “pushed unsubstantiated, misleading, and false information to suggest that the media is only covering the story because Neely was Black” and the other rider was white — and Musk was quick to latch on to this anti-white bias narrative.
Musk interacted with a series of posts from QAnon influencer KanekoaTheGreat, who seemingly argued that the media are biased against white people, and thus are at least partly responsible for the “division and polarization of society.” (The posts included graphs created by two different employees at the right-wing Manhattan Institute, one of whom is a self-proclaimed “wokeness studies scholar.”)Musk engaged with these posts by replying with responses like “interesting,” “wow,” and “I wonder why.” Quote-tweeting another user who previously wrote an essay attacking the “Woke Left,” Musk also claimed that the media are engaging in “massive public manipulation” for apparently using the terms “racist,” “racists,” and “racism” more frequently within the last decade than before.
Popular Information debunked Musk’s suggestion that the media display an anti-white bias: “Since the 1990s, research has shown that the media propagates negative stereotypes of Black people as criminals.” Also, not only do the media struggle to fairly cover race, but the Center for American Progress found that Black Americans are actually overrepresented in the media as perpetrators of crime.
Additionally, Musk and his right-wing allies have shared these graphs about the media’s coverage without the necessary sociopolitical context of the last decade; police officers have killed scores of Black Americans, white supremacist violence is becoming an increasing concern, and former President Donald Trump “upped the ante on race.”
Musk has responded to bad-faith actors' suggestions for Twitter features and encouraged his followers to subscribe to their accounts
One doesn’t need to scroll long to see an example of Musk engaging with a right-wing user. In just the last few days, Musk has laughed at anti-trans content, instructed his followers to subscribe to at least two different right-wing users, and mocked Vice President Kamala Harris.
- After anti-LGBTQ bigot and Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dilion begged for people to subscribe toThe Babylon Bee’s Twitter account, snarkily prefacing the ask with, “We know you have important things to spend your money on, like reparations and other people's student loans,” Musk responded, “I subscribed!”
- Wannabe governor of California **Michael Shellenberger** wrote a Twitter thread about “woke” culture war issues and pleaded for subscribers, to which Musk responded, “I recommend subscribing.” Musk is also evidently one of his subscribers.
- Musk responded to requests for new Twitter features from conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and QAnon influencer Ron Watkins, who may have posted as “Q,” with “coming” and “coming soon.”
- Responding to right-wing personality ALX, Musk posted a laughing emoji on an anti-trans tweet and made fun of a decision to name Harris “AI Czar.”
Musk is working to court back advertisers that have previously fled his platform, but they should take caution, considering the sort of content their ads might run alongside. As BBC reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh wrote on Twitter competitor Bluesky: “These days, if you want to find the latest conspiracy theories trending on Twitter, the easiest thing to do is to check the tweets Elon Musk replies to, you’ll find most of them.”
https://theconversation.com/too-many-people-think-satirical-news-is-real-121666
no graf pix
https://theconversation.com/too-many-people-think-satirical-news-is-real-121666
In July, the website Snopes published a piece fact-checking a story posted on The Babylon Bee, a popular satirical news site with a conservative bent.
Conservative columnist David French criticized Snopes for debunking what was, in his view, “obvious satire. Obvious.” A few days later, Fox News ran a segment featuring The Bee’s incredulous CEO.
But does everyone recognize satire as readily as French seems to?
Our team of communication researchers has spent years studying misinformation, satire and social media. Over the last several months, we’ve surveyed Americans’ beliefs about dozens of high-profile political issues. We identified news stories – both true and false – that were being shared widely on social media.
We discovered that many of the false stories weren’t the kind that were trying to intentionally deceive their readers; they actually came from satirical sites, and many people seemed to believe them.
Fool me once
People have long mistaken satire for real news.
On his popular satirical news show “The Colbert Report,” comedian Stephen Colbert assumed the character of a conservative cable news pundit. However, researchers found that conservatives regularly misinterpreted Colbert’s performance to be a sincere expression of his political beliefs.
The Onion, a popular satirical news website, is misunderstood so often that there’s a large online community dedicated to ridiculing those who have been fooled.
But now more than ever, Americans are worried about their ability to distinguish between what’s true and what isn’t and think made-up news is a significant problem facing the country.
Sometimes satire is easy to spot, like when The Babylon Bee reported that President Donald Trump had appointed Joe Biden to head up the Transportation Security Administration based on “Biden’s skill getting inappropriately close to people and making unwanted physical advances.” But other headlines are more difficult to assess.
For example, the claim that John Bolton described an attack on two Saudi oil tankers as “an attack on all Americans” might sound plausible until you’re told that the story appeared in The Onion.
The truth is, understanding online political satire isn’t easy. Many satirical websites mimic the tone and appearance of news sites. You have to be familiar with the political issue being satirized. You have to understand what normal political rhetoric looks like, and you have to recognize exaggeration. Otherwise, it’s pretty easy to mistake a satirical message for a literal one.
Do you know it when you see it?
Our study on misinformation and social media lasted six months. Every two weeks, we identified 10 of the most shared fake political stories on social media, which included satirical stories. Others were fake news reports meant to deliberately mislead readers.
We then asked a representative group of over 800 Americans to tell us if they believed claims based on those trending stories. By the end of the study, we had measured respondents’ beliefs about 120 widely shared falsehoods.
Satirical articles like those found on The Babylon Bee frequently showed up in our survey. In fact, stories published by The Bee were among the most shared factually inaccurate content in almost every survey we conducted. On one survey, The Babylon Bee had articles relating to five different falsehoods.
For each claim, we asked people to tell us whether it was true or false and how confident they were in their belief. Then we computed the proportion of Democrats and of Republicans who described these statements as “definitely true.”
If we zero in on The Babylon Bee, a few patterns stand out.
Members of both parties failed to recognize that The Babylon Bee is satire, but Republicans were considerably more likely to do so. Of the 23 falsehoods that came from The Bee, eight were confidently believed by at least 15% of Republican respondents. One of the most widely believed falsehoods was based on a series of made-up quotes attributed to Rep. Ilhan Omar. A satirical article that suggested that Sen. Bernie Sanders had criticized the billionaire who paid off Morehouse College graduates’ student debt was another falsehood that Republicans fell for.
Our surveys also featured nine falsehoods that emerged from The Onion. Here, Democrats were more often fooled, though they weren’t quite as credulous. Nonetheless, almost 1 in 8 Democrats was certain that White House counselor Kellyanne Conway had questioned the value of the rule of law.
It’s no surprise that, depending on the headline, satire might be more likely to deceive members of one political party over another. Individuals’ political worldviews consistently color their perceptions of facts. Still, Americans’ inability to agree on what is true and what is false is a problem for democracy.
Flagging satire
The larger question, though, is what we should do about this problem.
In other recent work, we compared the effectiveness of different ways of flagging inaccurate social media content.
We tested a couple of different methods. One involved including a warning that fact-checkers had determined the inaccuracy of a post. Another had a message indicating that the content was from a satirical site.
We found that labeling an article as “satire” was uniquely effective. Users were less likely to believe stories labeled as satire, were less likely to share them and saw the source as less credible. They also valued the warning.
Facebook tested this feature itself a few years ago, and Google News has started to label some satirical content.
[pix]
The New Yorker’s Borowitz Report – a satirical column written by Andy Borowtiz – is labeled ‘satire’ when it appears in Google News searches. Google News Screenshot
This suggests that clearly labeling satirical content as satire can help social media users navigate a complex and sometimes confusing news environment.
Despite French’s criticism of Snopes for fact-checking The Babylon Bee, he ends his essay by noting that “Snopes can serve a useful purpose. And there’s a space for it to remind readers that satire is satire.”
On this point, we couldn’t agree more.