Talk:The Babylon Bee/Archive 2

This is an archive of past discussions about The Babylon Bee. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

The Washington Times

The Washington Times is yellow at WP:RSP, with a particular note that it is marginally reliable for politics and that it should generally not be used for contentious claims. Here, we are citing it for an obviously contentious claim about politics in the (already-bloated) "Mistaken for factual reporting" section. I don't think we ought to be doing that. The sales figures are less contentious, but part of the problem with the Washington Times is that they are unreliable on things that related to their biases, which this certainly falls under; so I feel we should either find a higher-quality source for figures like those or omit them as WP:UNDUE (quite likely, if no mainstream source is covering them.) --Aquillion (talk) 19:11, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

You're referring to the "James Varney wrote..." sentence? I think it's fine—it's very clearly attributed in line with WP:RSOPINION, and I think it's good to include some reactions from mainstream conservative sources as well as the more left-leaning ones. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 21:58, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

satire

It would be preferable to have a secondary source that discusses 'the too meta for me' section The_Babylon_Bee#Not_the_Bee, what remains as satire when a Fox News story describes a parody of a parody of theonion.com is beyond my editing abilities. ~ cygnis insignis 18:07, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure what this is saying precisely. Could you elaborate? Squatch347 (talk) 18:23, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

There is a satirical site called The Onion, there was a phrase and subreddit 'not the onion' [sounds like satire, but apparently genuine], then there was this site, with its own spinoff by the same creators named "Not the Bee" [which I found when it mentioned a deletion discussion here]. A citation to the NYT is titled "How The Babylon Bee, a Right-Wing Satire Site, Capitalizes on Confusion". Fox News is amplifying the controversy in its reporting, a site providing incendiary infotainment that happens to be part of what The Onion began as satirizing. There ought to be a secondary source interpreting this confusion for clarification in the article. ~ cygnis insignis 14:00, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Again, I'm not sure exactly what you are proposing that isn't in the article. Aside from the fact the onion predates Fox, could you elaborate? Maybe best bet is to draft up a sample of what you'd like to include? Squatch347 (talk) 01:48, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

It would be nice to have a source other than Fox, since the subject is basically political. --Aquillion (talk) 08:04, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

conservative?

"The Onion is an American digital media company and newspaper organization that publishes satirical articles on international, national, and local news" "The Babylon Bee is a conservative Christian news satire website that publishes satirical articles on topics including religion, politics, current events, and public figures." If BB is a conservative, why than The Onion is not a progressive, a liberal? Double standards, obviously! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A05:4F44:80E:6F00:12B:A425:6AE8:6880 (talk) 02:44, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

If reliable sources widely describe The Onion as progressive, feel free to suggest that change at that article's talk page. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 02:14, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

"Self-Promotion" Removal

I'd like to discuss the concerns involved in the description that this page had related to Ford's sale as "self-promotional."

The section included two independent parts.

1) "[Dillon] whom Ford described as "a successful businessman who uses his resources for Kingdom purposes".

This part seems clearly not self promotional since it isn't about Ford, but rather his views about Seth Dillon.

2) "In a public announcement published on his personal website, Ford cited several reasons for the sale, including his discomfort with the power wielded by social media companies like Facebook over creators and their perceived anti-conservative and anti-Christian bias. He wrote that "Facebook has the power to kill publishers, and they do, not only based on publishing techniques, but based on worldview. Just think about that".

It is possible that we are operating off of a different definition of self-promotion, but I'm not sure how this would fit the common parlance definition. It is primarily about his personal reasons for selling the site and their relation to his perceptions about social media. It isn't "unduly self-serving" and there isn't any good reason to think that it is a dubious take on his own opinion, is it? I mean, I would get it if he were saying "it was the single most unique site ever created" or something like that per WP:ABOUTSELF; but all he is saying as I read it is, " I have some issues with social media and I would like to not be involved in a business that relies on it."

Squatch347 (talk) 04:47, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

This is almost textbook unduly self-serving. Anything that casts his actions in a positive light is going to be unduly self-serving for WP:ABOUTSELF; he is casting his motivations, actions, business, and the things he has worked on in a glowing light in a way that is obviously self-serving. If his beliefs in this respect are significant it should be easy to find coverage in a secondary source. (The first one is also unusable because ABOUTSELF does not allow for claims about third parties.) ABOUTSELF is for things like "I have two sons and live in New Jersey", not for things like "my motive is really just to help everyone, you know?" Obviously he's going to say his motives are pure and good and wonderful and all his actions were aimed at saving the world, but if it has no secondary coverage then it's completely unsuitable for inclusion. --Aquillion (talk) 20:14, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi Aquillion, I'm not sure what text you see as unduly positive. How would discomfort with Social Media be a positive reference about himself? He isn't saying that he sold it to fix that problem, only that he didn't want to be involved. In what sense is that self aggrandizement? Is the statement "I have problems with social media" so controversial as to warrant special care? Squatch347 (talk) 10:26, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Extensive usage of low-quality / disputed sources.

This article is heavily cited to fairly low-quality or partisan sources, often without in-line attribution noting their bias. While WP:BIASED sources can be used, they have to be used cautiously - they require attribution noting their bias, and using them extensively can result in giving WP:UNDUE weight to marginal views. It's against policy to repeatedly cite large portions of an article to sources with one particular POV. I did a quick cleanup, but since it was reverted, let's go over each of them:

The Washington Examiner and Washington Times are disputed partisan sources, which cannot be used for exceptional claims and which require attribution whenever it is used. There is no purpose to using them when better sources are available.
The Daily Signal is a publication of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. It has no reputation for fact-checking and accuracy and is not a reliable source; it cannot be cited unattributed and is undue for these sorts of opinions.
The Christian Examiner is an obscure source with no reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, and therefore not an WP:RS; and, again, it is plainly a partisan source, being used unattributed.
The Christian Post is similar to the above in most respects.
Finally, Fox News, a disputed / low-quality source for American politics, is cited throughout, usually unattributed; most notably, entire sections are cited solely to Fox, giving its perspective undue weight.

There are plenty of higher-quality sources out there; pruning these only serves to improve the article. One or two of the better ones could be kept attributed for their views if people think it is necessary, but citing low-quality and even (in some cases) plainly non-WP:RS sources over and over again throughout the article for article-voice statements without noting their bias is completely inappropriate. If these aspects or comments are genuinely notable enough to cover such a large part of the article, it should be easy to find higher-quality sources covering them. --Aquillion (talk) 20:25, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

I think we need to be careful to stick to the actual findings of WP:RSP here. Some editors, even a consensus of editors finding a source partisan does not mean it is auto-deprecated across wiki.

For example, with the Washington Times and Examiner, there is a consensus that these sources should be used be avoided for specifically political or scientific issues. There was a majority of editors that find those sources generally reliable for topics other than contentious politics and science. This subject is about media and entertainment and only constitutes politics in the broadest possible reading of that word (in that politics sadly seems to invade everything) the linked discussions to what resulted in those findings were specifically about policies and elections, so I'm not sure they apply here. Happy to hear a specific concern you might have about any specific usage here, but I don't think RSP supports a general removal of sources.

Christian Examiner, Christian Post, and Daily Signal have no such consensus findings at WP:RSP so there is no policy against their use. If a specific example of their use is problematic or a linked article has issues lets address them specifically, but we don't have support for a broad removal.

Lastly, fully agree that if there are better or more universally accepted sources for some of this, let's include them or even substitute them in. But their possible existence doesn't seem like a good reason to just remove sources that currently are included per WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM.

Squatch347 (talk) 10:27, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Why specify "right", "christian", etc?

For example, the onion isnt labeled "leftist" or "progressive" in its article, but the Babylon Bee is labeled for its ideology. Why? Leonidas8337 (talk) 18:00, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Other articles aren't relevant, we go by what the reliable sources say. If there are some for the Onion, they could be used, but it seems to make fun of both sides of the political spectrum. Doug Weller talk 10:58, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Seems fair enough Leonidas8337 (talk) 19:19, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Why was user 98.202.10.166's reply deleted? Leonidas8337 (talk) 19:18, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Because it was just an attack on editors. Read the second sentence at the top of this page. Doug Weller talk 19:26, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Expansion of Twitter Banning

There is significantly more context about The Babylon Bee's role in Musk's acquiring of Twitter that has come out in the last two months. I've added some of that context from the Washington Post. I took a stab at language, trying to copy as much directly from the sources when it came to any descriptive language. Let me know if anything strikes anyone as off. Thanks. Squatch347 (talk) 14:49, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Bold revision to litigation actions

I made a bold revision today [1], adding quite a bit of info on the Bee's various litigation actions and grouped them into their own section. This does seem to be a larger part of their activities and I think should be highlighted as such. Open to additional information or clean up and discussion if I'm approaching this wrong. Squatch347 (talk) 15:10, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

@Squatch347: Looks good to me. I did some cleanup, added some cites to the amicus briefs, etc. I also swapped out some of the references — per WP:RSN, Fox News on political topics, Forbes contributors, and the New York Post are generally unreliable. The statements were mostly supported by other more reliable sources, though, so the content hasn't changed much as a result. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 17:31, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks GorillaWarfare! I appreciate the cleanup as well, something I'm always a bit weak in. I could have sworn I looked at the Forbes link to make sure it was Forbes proper and not a contributor, but I might have missed it, no worries either way. Squatch347 (talk) 18:23, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

"Senior Contributor". No worries, they don't make the distinction super clear. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 19:01, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Ahh, that should have been clear enough for me though. Great catch. The little (i) popup next to it is a good warning sign as well. I'll keep an eye out for those in the future as well.

Went through a couple of the other updates you made, all look good, two quick questions.

Diff 1, agree on removal, we had talked about it at some point in the distant past and been ok with it, but I think on second review this is right. Could this be replaced then with a reference to the Bee getting more traffic and engagement than the Onion per the NYT? [2] I think this is a relevant point given we describe the Bee as a a conservative version of the Onion. Thoughts?

Diff 2, this doesn't quite feel like a primary source in the sense we normally mean it. I get it in one sense because it is the Guardian talking about itself, but it is also keeping it out of wiki voice, isn't really OR, and is relevant to the point about it being mistaken for factual, even by serious journalists.

Diff 3, I'd also like to consider re-adding the Twitter Files to this part, the content is from the New Yorker and adds context to Roth's role in the Bee's banning and his discussion with Musk over content moderation.

Squatch347 (talk) 19:09, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

@Squatch347: Let me know what you think of this edit re: the NYT statement, and this one re: The Guardian. My concern with The Guardian statement was that it was being combined with the sentence that "The Babylon Bee was brought into this wider conversation when several of their articles were shared on social media or reported upon...", suggesting that the lace collar incident was directly contributing to the Bee becoming a part of the wider conversation — which we'd need a secondary source to say.

Re The New Yorker, that article doesn't even mention The Babylon Bee.

Btw, regarding this edit, it's definitely The Washington Times. See cite 63. The Post is also cited in that paragraph (#68), but they don't quote Dillon. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 19:26, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

I like both of the first edits. I totally get now where you were coming from on the Guardian change, that makes a lot of sense, this is definitely a cleaner read than before.

I agree it doesn't reference the Bee directly, but does reference his proactive push to moderate certain content and his dispute with Musk which I think is what is covered in this section.

You are totally right about the Washington Times, I saw the reference to the new ref below with the Post, not the intermediate short citation. I've fixed it, sorry.

Squatch347 (talk) 19:39, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

This is an article about The Babylon Bee, not Yoel Roth or Twitter under Elon Musk or Twitter Files. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 19:44, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Low-quality sourcing throughout the article.

The article relies heavily on low-quality WP:MREL sourcing from the partisan press; while biased sources can be used in certain situations, the issue here is that they're almost all low-quality (noted as MREL on WP:RSP) and all partisan in the same direction, which causes WP:DUE issues on top of the WP:RS issues from relying heavily on low-quality sourcing. The last time I raised this issue, it was suggested that it could be fixed by finding better sources; however, years have passed with no improvement at all, so I've tagged the problematic sources to give people a chance to find replacements. But we can't leave glaringly self-serving statements like the site's creator claiming he was motivated by glowing selfless discomfort with the power wielded by social media companies like Facebook over creators and what he perceived as an anti-conservative and anti-Christian bias cited solely to ABOUTSELF sources; nor can we cite MREL sources like the Daily Signal, the Washington Times, and the Washington Examiner over and over throughout the article like this. We already cite numerous other partisan sources that share their biases (Christianity Today, the Christian Examiner, the Christian Post, Reason, the National Review, the National Catholic Register), often multiple times; there's no reason for us to retain low-quality partisan sources on an article whose sourcing is already lopsided in a way that introduces WP:DUE issues. --Aquillion (talk) 14:09, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

I think it would be productive to take specific uses and evaluate if they present a WP:DUE issue. The Washington Examiner note, for example, cautions that it shouldn't be used for exceptional claims, and I'm not sure anything in this article would fall into that category. Is there a specific usage of that source that you think causes an issue?

It might also be important for us to review if these sources are used as sole support for a section or if they are part of multiple sources being attached to a section.

The website sale part is slightly different. I think you have a good point that it is a self-published source and we need to exercise caution. There is a Washington Post article noting, essentially the same thing, as his reasons for founding the site in 2016 and a Christian Post article that cites the same quote about Dillon which would, at least, improve this from a self-published article. Would there be a better language formulation of his motivations that wouldn't read as "glowing" to you? I think we added some good attribution language in there and moderated it a bit, but open to some more wordsmithing.

One other quick question, for the litigation section, is your concern over the "increasing" language or that the cases are free speech related? The former does seem a bit OR now that I read it again, so I'm going to remove that. The latter seems relatively obvious given the nature of the actual citations and the language in the articles describing the Bee's role, but just wanted to check.

Squatch347 (talk) 14:29, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

The trash sources shouldn't ever have been there; please don't put them back just-in-case, they're in the history if anyone really wants to rescue the claims. If you want to rescue the claims, please cite them to solid RSes - not to fringe news sites or conservative thinktanks pretending to be news sources, as was the case previously - David Gerard (talk) 23:08, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

I feel that David Gerard has handled most of this, but for the last point, obviously my objection is to the characterization of litigation related to free speech-related cases, since that's where I put the tag - it characterizes the reason for the Bee's involvement in ways that the sources (especially if we ignore the WP:BIASED ones who require attribution) in ways that the sources mostly do not. In fact, skimming the section, it has serious sourcing issues of a different sort. Most of the BIASED sources are used without attribution (both here and elsewhere, but it's a particular problem here), many of the more neutral sources don't mention the Bee at all, and the ones that do mention it often only mention it in passing. And many of those, while they mention the first amendment, also specifically indicate that the Bee is concerned that conservatives are being censored; it is not a reasonable summary of the section's content to state only that they are concerned with "litigation related to free speech cases", with no citation. But really the entire section needs cleanup - removing sources that don't mention the Bee, attributing biased sources, and so on. At that point how to summarize it might be more clear, assuming it even needs a summary (there's no particular reason why it would - the summary gives the idea that the Bee is "standing up for free speech" or somesuch in general, but obviously that's WP:SYNTH without a source supporting it; and if we're forced to cite it to a biased source then we'd have to attribute it.) My reading of the section, and the way I would summarize it if we had to do it without a broader summary-style source, is that the most we could say is that the Bee feels that conservative voices are being silenced and is therefore pushing for legislation to advance conservative speech, ie. speech that it agrees with. That's not really a free-speech stance. All of that said, the problem can be solved by avoiding an uncited summary for something potentially controversial like this, and either finding a source that summarizes the situation, having no summary at all, or having a more anodyne one that doesn't make claims as to the Bee's motivations. --Aquillion (talk) 10:33, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

I would say take an axe to it. Anything that's not from a third-party solid RS should just be binned. As you say, it's been tagged for a long time and nobody's bothered; it's time to bother. Individual claims can be rescued as and when anyone provides a third-party solid RS for them - David Gerard (talk) 23:05, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Well it would have been nice get consensus before reinserting changes to articles, it helps make discussions a bit less antagonistic in my experience.

Related to your points, we don't just remove sources because we don't like them, we have [[wp:rsp]] to guide us on how to approach these sources. Several of the ones you removed have no deprecation or caution reference at RSP and, for the points being made here, aren't particularly concerning. We aren't asking the source to support some account of a conversation held behind closed door or to make some political point.

MREL advises is to use other sources if we have them, it doesn't say we should just blank large sections of the article if these are the best sources.

I'm particularly surprised by a few of the sources you removed like Christianity Today which isn't deprecated on any topic at all that I'm aware, what is the justification for calling that a low quality source.

Squatch347 (talk) 23:55, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

WP:V, which is policy, requires WP:RSes. You blithely re-added - which for WP:V purposes is the same as adding - a large swathe of dubious sources.

This is clearly an article in serious need of cleanup. If you have claims you particularly want to go in, by all means add them again with solid mainstream RSes, not weird partisan sites, and not the self-aggrandising ramblings from the founder. This is an encyclopedia - David Gerard (talk) 00:45, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Article seems tweaked to downplay Dillon's impact on site

Efforts seem to have been made to obfuscate how much Dillon did to shift the Bee from a generally light-hearted Christian satire site to a right-wing reaction mill invested in spreading bigoted and divisive content. The sources cited for characterizing the new@ direction seem cherry-picked to minimize the clear culture war purposes of the articles. Can anyone suggest an older revision that better describes what actually happened and how different the project is now from how it began? 2601:1C0:717E:4C0:DD63:C770:10AE:3169 (talk) 23:46, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi, do you have a specific reference and language suggestion? We do have some discussion in the page about how the tone shifted. I don't think any of our current sources specifically attribute that to Dillon so we would need a WP:RS to make that addition and would need to be cautious to not make it in wikivoice. Squatch347 (talk) 14:44, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

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