Why The Babylon Bee Doesn’t Back Down from Its Beliefs
By Movieguide® Contributor
Kyle Mann and Joel Berry from The Babylon Bee explained how their satire site became involved in the fight for free speech and why they believe Christians need to take their beliefs to all areas of their lives.
“This was never a fight that we intended to be a part of, and I think you see that with a lot of people that are standing up now…” Mann told Alisa Childers. “There’s a sense in which like I’m not super political myself, and I don’t want to fight this battle, like, I wanted to write jokes on the internet; we wanted to just have fun and put some good stuff out in the world.”
“But there comes a time, I think, that God calls each of us, you know, that like if you don’t stand up now, there’s not going to be an opportunity — especially when you’re talking about the right to speak your mind — if we don’t stand up for that now, you’re not going to have the right and then you won’t be able to fight at all,” Mann continued. “So I always look at us as like these accidental free speech champions because we were just writing jokes.”
READ MORE: BABYLON BEE EDITOR EXPLAINS WHY SATIRE IS A POWERFUL TOOL TO EXAMINE CULTURE
For the Babylon Bee, the fight for free speech is a fight for their very existence; even when they aren’t being publicly censored, most social media sites are working behind the scenes to limit their reach. However, they rely on reaching the masses for their business.
“Originally, you know, the censorship was pretty overt and really kind of ham-fisted and funny…” Berry explained. “A lot of what we’re seeing now is as opposed to like, you know, the banning and suspending stuff, a lot of these big tech companies will kind of suppress your reach invisibly in a way you can’t really prove or put your finger on, and that kind of stuff is a little harder to fight against sometimes.”
While some Christians might argue that the fight for freedom of speech — or government in general — is not an area that Christianity applies to, Mann and Berry both argue that Christians need to fight for their beliefs in every area of their lives.
“Christians are meant to be in the world, and we’re meant to be salt and light,” Berry said. “Our presence here is supposed to have a very real impact on the world around us, you know. We don’t do this for selfish reasons to try to gain power for ourselves.”
Seth Dillon, The Babylon Bee’s CEO, previously explained the philosophy behind each satirical headline.
“We literally wake up every day and think to ourselves, ‘What would be a funny take on what’s happening in the news today? What would be a fun take on this? What would be funny? What would be true? How do we speak the truth in a culture that’s so often attracted to subjectivism? How do we [communicate] objective truth in a subjective world?’” he told Deseret News.
“We do this because we love our neighbor, you know, good policy, good political policy is good for our neighbor, good immigration policy is good for our neighbor, good tax policy is good for our neighbor, and so there is no need for Christians to be shy about that,” Berry added.
READ MORE: BABYLON BEE EDITOR DISCUSSES SATIRE: ‘WE COMMUNICATE TRUTH TO A POST-TRUTH CULTURE’
The Bee recently scored a legal victory in California after the state’s governor “signed two laws [earlier this year]…that censor freedom of speech by using vague standards to punish people for posting certain political content online, including political memes and parodies of politicians.”
“Our job is hard enough when our jokes keep coming true, as if they were prophecies,” said Dillon. “But it becomes significantly more difficult when self-serving politicians abuse their power to try to control public discourse and clamp down on comedy. Unfortunately for them, the First Amendment secures our right to tell jokes they don’t like.”
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