REUTERS IS “FACT CHECKING” AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Reuters fact-checkers reached out for comment on our @TheBabylonBee story about 'Allahu Akbar' replacing 'Cheerio Mate' in the UK. I tried to help them out. pic.twitter.com/obHm9qB7cG

— Kyle Mann (@The_Kyle_Mann) December 9, 2024

Flashback to 2019: The Babylon Bee Satirizes the Absurdities of American Politics. Snopes Doesn’t Seem to Get the Joke.

In 2021, Laurene Powell Jobs’ and Jeffrey Goldberg’s equally far left Atlantic would strike the same pose at being equally clueless about the Bee’s satire:

[Emma] Green: You guys wrote an article in January 2020 that was shared roughly 3 million times, claimingthat Democrats called for the American flag to be flown at half-staff when the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was killed in an American strike.

What makes this funny? I know that’s the worst question to ask somebody who writes jokes.

[Kyle] Mann: It’s funny because General Soleimani died and then they called for flags to be flown at half-mast. Get it?

Green: But that’s what I’m saying. Besides just saying the joke again, what makes it funny?

Mann: Do you want me to explain the joke to you? Because the joke is that General Soleimani died and Democrats were sad.

If you don’t know why that’s funny, then you’re not the audience for the joke. The funniest part is that it got fact-checked because it was so believable that Democrats would do that. That’s a real honor.

As Steve spotted in 2019, a possible explanation from a Twitter user: “They’re intentionally pretending that these memes are meant to mislead the public so they can claim censorship is necessary to deal with misinformation on social media.”

With the second Trump term seemingly already having started, the legacy media wants very much to resume pretending to be the Central Scrutinizer once again.