USA TODAY’S “FACT CHECK INTERN” CONTINUES TO KNOCK ‘EM OUT OF THE PARK: Fact check: Story about United Airlines, Black Lives Matter and a toddler is satirical.
Social justice remains a concern for some Americans. But a post on social media claims an airline may have taken its support for the cause too far.
An article in the Babylon Bee, headlined “United Airlines Kicks 2-Year-Old Off Flight For Refusing To Say ‘Black Lives Matter,'” claims the airline refused to let a young girl fly after she couldn’t pronounce the racial justice expression. The airline supposedly scolded the family of the child in a statement, too, citing its “strict ideological purity requirement” for all flights. Promotion for the article was posted to Instagram.
The satire article likely drew from other airlines’ support of the Black Lives Matter movement, too. Both American Airlines and Delta Air Lines created brand-specific “Black Lives Matter” pins for their employees to wear on the job.
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The Babylon Bee article is intended to be satire.
The website calls itself the “world’s best satire site, totally inerrant in all its truth claims,” and there’s no evidence United Airlines stopped a family from flying due to a child’s inability to say the phrase “Black Lives Matter.”
“Satirists often leverage the context of real events to create satirical stories,” Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon told USA TODAY. “We do this by modifying the scenario or exaggerating what happened to make a point. See this piece, for example. COVID relief bills have been in the news for some time. We aren’t conflating a real story with a fake one by making this joke; rather, we’re using real-world events as a basis and context for offering satirical criticism and commentary.”
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Our rating: Satire
We rate the claim that United Airlines kicked a child off a flight for refusing to say “Black Lives Matter” as SATIRE because it uses irony and exaggeration to criticize an actual event. The article appears to satirize a recent situation in which a family was kicked off a United Airlines flight because its 2-year-old would not wear a face mask.
I’m glad to know that a satirical article appearing on one of America’s most popular satirical Websites is indeed satire, as I was worried for a moment.
The USA Today author’s LinkedIn profile describes her as “Fact Check Intern at USA TODAY. I am a senior at DePaul University pursuing a degree in journalism with a minor in American politics. My work has been published in USA TODAY, the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Suburban Life, WTTW, Northwest Herald, Highland Park Landmark, Lake Forest Leader, gb&d magazine, The DePaulia, Sixtysix magazine and The Daily Iowan.”
When Ben Rhodes famously said, “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing,” like most of the “reporters” he fed stories to, he didn’t know the half of it.