Case Study 1: The Ethics of Satire

The Onion, the Babylon Bee, and When Satire Becomes Misinformation

Introduction

Satire has functioned as one of the most powerful tools of political critique throughout recorded history. From Aristophanes lampooning Athenian politicians to Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," from Voltaire to Mark Twain to Stephen Colbert, satirists have wielded irony, absurdity, and exaggeration to expose hypocrisy, challenge power, and clarify political reality by illuminating its contradictions.

The digital age has both empowered and complicated satirical communication. Satire now travels at the speed of social media — but so does the decontextualization that can transform it from pointed critique into genuine misinformation. A satirical headline, stripped of its source and context, may circulate as a factual claim. A fabricated "parody account" may be mistaken for a real figure. A satirical scenario, remembered imperfectly weeks after reading, may resurface as a "fact" in someone's memory.

This case study examines the ethics of satire in the digital age through two illuminating cases: the El Salvador president episode involving The Onion, and the series of controversies surrounding the Babylon Bee that led to its temporary suspension from Twitter. Together, these cases allow us to develop a principled framework for distinguishing satire that serves legitimate epistemic purposes from satire that causes genuine epistemic harm.

Background: The Nature and Function of Satire

Satire differs from ordinary deceptive communication in crucial ways. The satirist's goal is not to create a false belief in the audience's mind; it is to use the apparent form of a false belief to expose something true — about power, about hypocrisy, about the gap between pretension and reality. Jonathan Swift did not intend readers to believe that eating Irish children was literally his recommendation; he intended them to recognize, through the horror of the literal reading, the inhumanity of British colonial policy toward Ireland.

The communicative success of satire thus depends on a particular interpretive relationship between author and audience. The audience must recognize that the literal content is not intended as sincere assertion — that the "pretend truth" is a vehicle for a deeper truth — while also grasping what the deeper truth is. This interpretive requirement is sophisticated, and it is not universally met.

Philosophers have noted that satire occupies a distinctive position in the ethics of assertion. If we follow Grice's account of communication, the sincerity norm (don't say what you don't believe) is technically violated by satire — the satirist asserts things they don't believe literally. But satire is a recognized genre with a recognized communicative purpose, and within that genre, the sincerity norm is understood to be suspended. No one criticizes Swift for lying about eating babies.

The ethical distinctiveness of satire thus rests on what we might call genre transparency: the audience recognizes that they are in a satirical register and adjusts their interpretive framework accordingly. When genre transparency fails — when the satirical register is not recognized — the communication can become functionally equivalent to deception, regardless of the satirist's intent.

Case 1: The Onion and El Salvador's President

The Incident

The Onion, America's most famous satirical news publication, has for decades published pieces that closely mimic the format of serious journalism — with datelines, quotes, and factual-sounding language — while the content is clearly absurdist or ironic to anyone who recognizes the source or reads carefully.

In a notable case that drew international attention, The Onion published a piece that generated genuine confusion when shared without its original source context. The piece was shared on social media by users in El Salvador and elsewhere who did not recognize The Onion as a satire publication and encountered the article stripped of its original URL. Screenshots circulated as evidence of actual events. Fact-checkers had to intervene to clarify that the claims in the article were fabricated for satirical purposes.

This incident exemplifies the decontextualization problem of digital satire: The Onion's satire functions perfectly well for audiences familiar with its genre and reputation. It fails, potentially catastrophically, when encountered by audiences who lack that contextual knowledge.

Ethical Analysis: Intent vs. Effect

The Onion's editors and writers intend to produce satire — they are not attempting to deceive their readers. From the perspective of intent, their work is ethically distinct from deliberate disinformation. Yet the effects can be similar: readers who lack contextual knowledge form false beliefs based on the content.

The ethics of communication cannot be fully assessed by intent alone. If a communicator knows or reasonably should know that their communication will be received by audiences who cannot reliably distinguish the satirical register from sincere assertion — and especially if their content circulates widely in decontextualized forms — the intent/effect gap becomes ethically significant.

Several considerations bear on this:

Scale matters: When a satirical piece might be seen by millions of people across dozens of countries with varying familiarity with American satirical publications, the probability that a significant number of readers will encounter it without adequate contextual information is substantial. The ethical burden of ensuring genre clarity is higher for content with high viral potential.

Platform context matters: A satirical piece that appears on theonion.com, with clear branding, functions differently from the same piece shared as a screenshot without attribution. The ethics of satire in a digital environment cannot be evaluated only with reference to the original publication context.

Subject matter matters: Satire that touches on serious current events, public health, elections, or political figures in jurisdictions where that person holds real power carries higher epistemic risk than clearly absurdist content. The ethical obligations of clarity are proportionate to the real-world consequences of misunderstanding.

The Onion's Self-Understanding

Interestingly, The Onion has consistently maintained a complex relationship with the epistemic consequences of its work. In Supreme Court amicus briefs (specifically in Novak v. City of Parma, 2022), The Onion argued eloquently for the legal protection of parody, noting that "the line between truth and satire has always been blurry" and that this ambiguity is sometimes the source of satire's power.

This is philosophically significant: The Onion effectively acknowledges that satire can create genuine epistemic confusion, and defends this as a feature, not a bug, of the satirical form. The confusion, on this view, is part of what makes the reader stop, reread, question, and ultimately engage more deeply with the political reality the satire illuminates.

This defense has genuine merit for audiences who have the contextual resources to navigate the ambiguity. It has less merit for audiences who do not, particularly when the content concerns their own political leaders and their consequential decisions.

Case 2: The Babylon Bee and Twitter

Background

The Babylon Bee is a conservative Christian satirical publication that models itself on The Onion but with a right-leaning orientation, satirizing progressive politics, liberal institutions, and mainstream media. It has grown substantially since its founding in 2016, attracting millions of readers and significant cultural influence in conservative circles.

The Babylon Bee's relationship with social media platforms has been contentious. In March 2022, Twitter temporarily suspended the Babylon Bee's account after it published a satirical post naming U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine as "Man of the Year" — a piece that many critics characterized as transphobic misgendering rather than legitimate satire.

The Suspension and Its Aftermath

Twitter's decision to suspend the Babylon Bee was itself immediately controversial and raised complex questions about the line between satire, hate speech, and protected expression. The Babylon Bee refused to delete the post, arguing that it was satire commenting on biological sex and gender ideology, and its account remained suspended for several days before being restored.

The episode intersected with Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter. Musk cited the Babylon Bee suspension as an example of what he viewed as politically biased content moderation by Twitter's prior leadership, and the suspension was reportedly among the incidents that motivated him to purchase the platform.

Analyzing the Ethical Dimensions

The Babylon Bee case illuminates several distinct ethical questions:

1. Is this satire or is it hate speech?

The piece referring to Rachel Levine used a name and pronouns inconsistent with her stated identity. Critics argued that regardless of satirical intent, the deliberate misgendering of a trans individual causes direct harm to the individual — not through creating false beliefs in readers, but through the act of misgendering itself, which many trans rights frameworks identify as a form of dignitary harm.

The satirical framing complicates this. If the piece were understood only as satire — as commentary on gender discourse rather than as a sincere claim about Levine's identity — the dignitary harm analysis would be different than if the satirical framing is taken as cover for deliberate misgendering. The ethics depends, in part, on whether "satire" is being used to legitimately comment on contested political questions or to perform harm that would otherwise be actionable while claiming the protection of satirical license.

2. Does satire protect harmful assertions?

This question gets at a deep tension in the ethics of satire. Satire routinely makes claims that would be harmful if asserted sincerely — mocking, degrading, humiliating its targets. Swift's "A Modest Proposal" makes what would be, if sincere, a monstrous claim. We do not hold Swift morally responsible for the monstrous claim because the satirical register makes clear it is not sincere.

But does satirical framing always neutralize the harm of otherwise harmful assertions? Consider: a satirical piece that includes a realistic fake quote from a real private individual, saying something they would find deeply embarrassing. The satirical framing does not prevent the fake quote from damaging the person's reputation among audiences who miss the satirical register. The harm from this kind of satire is not epistemic (creating false beliefs about general facts) but reputational and dignitary (causing harm to a specific person).

When satire targets a protected identity characteristic — and when that targeting takes the specific form of denying that characteristic (misgendering a trans person rather than commenting on gender discourse from a position outside that identity) — the dignitary harm analysis becomes particularly acute.

3. The Platform Moderation Dilemma

Twitter's suspension decision illustrates the moderation dilemma in a politically charged context. The content is from a publication that labels itself satirical; the content concerns contested political and social questions on which reasonable people disagree; and the affected parties (trans rights advocates and their critics) have strongly divergent views on whether the content constitutes legitimate satire or hate speech.

Platform moderation cannot resolve the underlying substantive dispute about the ethics of misgendering satire. But it must make a consequential decision: permit the content (risk being seen as endorsing trans-hostile content and causing harm to trans users) or suppress it (risk being seen as censoring legitimate conservative satire and political commentary, with consequent implications for freedom of expression).

This dilemma has no clean answer from first principles. It requires judgment about proportionality, community standards, the severity of the dignitary harm claimed, the legitimacy of the satirical frame, and the political consequences of each choice — all in a context of genuine reasonable disagreement.

Developing an Ethical Framework for Satirical Content

Drawing on these cases, we can develop a principled framework for evaluating the ethics of satirical content and appropriate responses to it:

Criterion 1: Genre Transparency Is the satirical nature of the content clearly marked, both in the original publication context and as it is likely to circulate in secondary contexts (screenshots, shares without URL, etc.)? Content that is satirical in its original context but loses those markers in circulation creates greater epistemic risk. Publishers have a responsibility to make satirical framing robust to decontextualization — through clear labeling, unmistakably absurdist content, or other mechanisms.

Criterion 2: Epistemic Harm Potential What is the probability and magnitude of genuine false belief creation, and how consequential are those false beliefs? Satire that concerns contested political figures, public health decisions, or ongoing civic controversies in jurisdictions where misunderstanding might have real-world consequences carries higher ethical obligations of clarity.

Criterion 3: Dignitary Harm Does the satire, regardless of its epistemic effects on third-party readers, directly harm a specific individual through its mode of expression — through defamation, harassment, misgendering, or other identity-based attack? Dignitary harm is analytically distinct from epistemic harm and requires separate evaluation. The satirical frame does not automatically neutralize dignitary harm.

Criterion 4: Political and Social Context Is the satire punching up (targeting power, hypocrisy, institutional failure) or punching down (targeting marginalized groups, specific private individuals, or communities with limited power to respond)? The classical defense of satire rests on its function as a check on power; satire that reproduces patterns of oppression enjoys less of this defense.

Criterion 5: Proportionality of Response What is the most proportionate platform response to satire that raises ethical concerns? The options — labeling, reduced distribution, removal, suspension — carry different costs and benefits. Labeling preserves the content while providing context; removal prevents harm but suppresses expression; suspension signals disapproval while carrying significant political charge. Proportionality requires calibrating the response to the severity of the harm, the legitimacy of the expression, and the availability of less restrictive alternatives.

The Law: First Amendment and Parody Doctrine

In the United States, parody and satire enjoy strong First Amendment protection. Courts have generally distinguished between parody (which imitates the target to comment on it and cannot be read as making sincere factual claims) and false statements of fact (which are actionable in defamation). Hustler Magazine v. Falwell (1988) established that even deeply offensive parody targeting a public figure cannot be the basis for an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim without a false statement of fact made with actual malice.

Novak v. City of Parma (2022) arose when a Facebook user created a parody page mimicking the Parma, Ohio police department's official page and was arrested for it. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that parody of government entities is fully protected, and The Onion filed an influential amicus brief defending the principle.

These legal protections are important but do not resolve the ethical questions. Legal permissibility establishes a floor, not a ceiling. The ethics of satire in the digital age requires going beyond "is this legally protected?" to ask "what epistemic and dignitary responsibilities do satirists, publishers, and platforms have?"

Discussion Questions

1. Should satire publications like The Onion implement technical measures — watermarks, machine-readable labels, persistent metadata — to ensure that their content retains clear satirical marking even when shared out of context? What would this require technically, and what would be lost if satire were always unambiguously marked?

2. Apply the five-criterion framework developed above to the Babylon Bee/Rachel Levine case. Does the framework yield a clear verdict, or does it identify genuine uncertainty? How should decision-makers proceed under genuine ethical uncertainty?

3. In 2014, a study published in Science found that satirical news (specifically, "The Daily Show") actually increased viewers' political knowledge compared to watching traditional news. Does this empirical finding affect the ethical analysis of satire's epistemic role? Can satire serve epistemic goods even when it creates false beliefs about specific facts?

4. Consider a foreign audience with no familiarity with American satirical publications. Do American satirical publishers have ethical obligations to those audiences, or is their responsibility limited to their intended audiences? How should we think about the global reach of locally-oriented satire?

5. The Babylon Bee and The Onion both operate as satirical publications, but they have very different political orientations and very different relationships with fact-checkers and platform moderation decisions. Is there evidence that similarly constructed satirical content has been treated differently based on political orientation? If so, what are the ethical implications for platform moderation?

6. Some scholars argue that satire in a highly polarized society may "preach to the choir" — reinforcing the political identities of those who already agree with its implicit message while being interpreted as sincere by those who disagree, without producing the political insight that satire's defenders claim. If this is empirically accurate, does it affect the ethical status of political satire?

Conclusion

Satire's power and its risks both stem from the same source: its exploitation of the gap between literal content and intended meaning. In bounded, contextually rich communities of interpretation, satire can be a uniquely powerful vehicle for political truth-telling, exposing the gap between political pretension and reality through the very form of pretense.

In the decontextualized, algorithmically curated information environments of the digital age, that same gap becomes an epistemic vulnerability — a mechanism through which false impressions can propagate to audiences who lack the contextual resources to correctly interpret what they are encountering.

The ethics of digital satire cannot be reduced to "protect satire" or "suppress harmful content." It requires the more demanding work of developing, implementing, and sustaining norms and practices that allow satire to serve its legitimate epistemic and political functions while mitigating the epistemic and dignitary harms that arise when its genre markers fail to travel with it. That work belongs to publishers, platforms, journalists, and ultimately to the audiences who consume and share satirical content — each of whom bears some responsibility for the epistemic quality of the shared environment they help to create.

Related Sections: Chapter 41, Sections 41.1 (The Ethics of Truth-Telling), 41.2 (Deception Without Lying), 41.6 (The Ethics of Platform Moderation)

Related Case Study: Case Study 2 — Whistleblowing as Epistemic Justice