The Onion, the satirical news outlet, wants to buy Infowars, the platform conspiracy theorist Alex Jones used to defame families of the Sandy Hook massacre. Onion CEO Ben Collins shares why and John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, explains what it means to Sandy Hook families and the fight against disinformation. Further Reading: -The Onion Is Buying Alex Jones’s Infowars Site -Alex Jones Files for Bankruptcy Following Sandy Hook Trial Losses Further Listening: -How Much Will Alex Jones Pay for his Sandy Hook Lie? -What One School District Is Doing About Rising Gun Violence Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Yesterday, the company that owns the satirical news organization The Onion shared some news that almost seemed like a parody. The Onion was going to buy InfoWars.
The Onion jokingly wrote, this is a coup for our company and a well-deserved victory for multinational elites.
InfoWars was owned by the far-right media personality Alex Jones and was up for sale as part of a bankruptcy proceeding. To a lot of people, the news came as a big, hilarious surprise.
Yeah, I mean, that's what we wanted it to be. We wanted people to wake up and be like, wait, I can get a push alert that's not the worst thing in the world. I can get a push alert that's like, oh my God, a nice thing happened on the planet. So we just wanted people to feel that way. This is Ben Collins, the CEO of The Onion.
Alex Jones is this is a guy who has spent his whole life trying to legitimize some pretty awful ideas through the veneer of the news. He's going to keep doing this like that's just the way it is. But we can interrupt him and also we can get one over on him. I think like
When most people read this news yesterday, they looked at their phone for the first time in a while, potentially, and was like, huh, something good happened? Something funny happened? That's what we wanted to do. And at the end of the day, that's the reaction we want to have from people. And also, we also get to build this world.
The Onion is the very best place at going at the heart of the absurdities of American life. And there's nothing more absurd than this.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Friday, November 15th. Coming up on the show, why The Onion bought InfoWars and what it plans to do with it.
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