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.
Is this real? Or is this an Onion headline?
It's real. The Onion won the auction for "Jones’s company’s intellectual property, such as its website, customer lists, inventory and certain social media accounts, and the production equipment" (from The Guardian), and worked with the Sandy Hook families to make the finance for the bid work (I think the families reduced their awarded damages to allow the Onions bid to be viable).
Its a real Onion headline thats for sure.