The Onion buys conspiracy website Infowars after $1.5b ruling against founder Alex Jones
The Onion buys conspiracy website Infowars after $1.5b ruling against founder Alex Jones
Alex Jones owes $1.5 billion after defaming the families of those killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, claiming it was a hoax staged by crisis actors.
In short:
The satirical news website The Onion, which claims to have 4.3 trillion daily readers, will partner with a gun violence prevention organisation to relaunch the conspiracy website, Infowars.
Infowars' founder Alex Jones claimed the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax conducted by crisis actors.
What's next?
Jones has vowed to file legal challenges to stop The Onion taking his site.
In a statement, The Onion chief executive Ben Collins said the organisation wanted to replace "Infowars' relentless barrage of disinformation" with the Onion's "relentless barrage of humour".
"The Onion is proud to acquire Infowars, and we look forward to continuing its storied tradition of scaring the site's users with lies until they fork over their cold, hard cash," he said.
Is there any possible layer of satire The Onion could add to the site to make it more of a joke though??
I’m sure the editors at the onion are up for the challenge. I imagine a scenario where they turn infowars to a legit news outlet. It would be hilarious 😆
The Onion presenting absurd stories seriously while Infowars does legit news in the style of a conspiracy nut sounds amazing.
It would be hard to top the gay frogs thing, but I'm sure they've got some ideas.
The Onion has money?
As I understand it, some of the parents of the children who were murdered have agreed to drop part of their claim, in exchange for Infowars being sold to The Onion. It's not like they were going to collect the entire 1.5 billion dollars anyway.
Their new owner is rich as fuck so yeah.