The Onion’s Digital Director Baratunde Thurston: News Is Absurd

From Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show to The Onion to Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report, fake news has become as much a part of the national dialogue as the real news it parodies. During the 2008 presidential campaign, for example, then-candidates Barack Obama and John McCain both appeared on Stewart’s program, making Comedy Central almost as much of a campaign stop as “Meet The Press.” And while Bill O’Reilly might admonish viewers of such programs as “stoned slackers,” at least one study has indicated that fans of fake news are also some of the best-informed. Why are Americans more and more turning to fake news

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The Onion’s Digital Director Baratunde Thurston: News Is Absurd