Beijing Newspaper Spoofed by The Onion

mattsucks writes "Reuters is reporting a story about the Beijing Evening News. Apparently, they too believe that everything they read on the internet is true, republishing a story from The Onion. Or at least one of their freelance writers believes it...." This is absolutely great.

The Story

[bckspc]

Paper Falls for Gag in Humor Tabloid

June 07, 2002 09:59 AM ET Email this article Printer friendly version

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing's most popular newspaper has unwittingly republished a bogus story about U.S. Congress threats to skip town for Memphis or Charlotte unless Washington builds them a new Capitol building with a retractable dome.

The source? America's celebrated spoof tabloid, the Onion.

The Beijing Evening News, which claims a circulation of 1.25 million, translated portions of the Onion's tall tale word-for-word in the international news page of its June 3 edition.

The reprinted version of the May 29 article, which parodies Congress as a Major League Baseball squad, also copied the Onion's would-be blueprint for a new legislative home that resembles a ballpark. "Don't get us wrong: We love the drafty old building," the Onion quoted House Speaker Dennis Hastert as saying.

"But the hard reality is, it's no longer suitable for a world-class legislative branch. The sight lines are bad, there aren't enough concession stands or bathrooms, and the parking is miserable."

The spoof from the brazen entertainment tabloid, which dubs itself "America's finest news source," apparently took in the Evening News.
"The story was written by one of our freelance writers," an editor at the Evening News told Reuters on Friday. "His stuff has been pretty much reliable before."

The editor said he had received other calls from readers about the article. "They were also suspicious of the contents."

Told the story came from the Onion and was not true, the editor said, "We would first have to check that out. If it's indeed fake, I'm sure there will be some form of correction."

How is this news for nerds?

[MadFarmAnimalz]

Guess this will be my first trolling mod here, but I do not see what this is doing on slashdot.

I got this days ago from the mainstream media.

This is not what I expect from slashdot. Yet another testament to the need for a more democratic story acceptance system.

While we're talking about the Onion...

[CokeBear]

Best Onion Article Ever:

http://www.theonion.com/onion3734/god_clarifies_do nt_kill.html [theonion.com]

Not only is it funny, but also deeply insightful, even for an atheist like me.

Factual Error Found on Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the page seems to be gone now, but the onion ran this just a couple of weeks ago:
Factual Error Found on Internet [theonion.com]

"The Information Age was dealt a stunning blow Monday, when a factual error was discovered on the Internet. The error was found on TedsUltimateBradyBunch.com, a Brady Bunch fan site that incorrectly listed the show's debut year as 1968, not 1969.

"Caryn Wisniewski, a Pueblo, CO, legal secretary and diehard Brady Bunch fan, came across the mistake while searching for information about the show's first-season cast."

My coworkers believed the "Post Office 5 cent e-ma

[doublem]

I still remember the damn fool local DJs reading the "Post office wants to levy a 5 cent tax on each e-mail" story as real. Most of my coworkers were in a panic and complaining bitterly. I printed up disclaimers debunking the story from the US Post Office's web site, among other locations.

Sadly, my coworkers insisted that the post office must be lying, because "They wouldn't put it on the radio if it weren't true!" (Yes, that is a real quote)

It was read on WAAF (bottom of the dung pile "rock" station) by "Mistress Carrie" for crying out loud!

And then there was the time Hillary Clinton was asked about her stance on the bill during an interview...

Onion founder's former comments on the issue

[afflatus_com]

The founder of the Onion was on Jay Leno a while back and discussed the problem at length.

He said that the biggest problem was email forwards from people who consider it a news release, and in the email there is not the rest of the onion's site for context, so people don't know it is a parody.

He said the 2 that generated the most amount of letters from concerned citizens, up to that point in time, was "Chinese woman gives birth to septuplets, doesn't know which one to keep" and "New York to install infant-only dumpsters".

Sounds Familiar ...

[Batou]

I have a very-muched-loved-yet-altogether-nuts-over-religio n uncle that used to send out his own newsletter giving news from the Christian coalition mindset kind of thing. Used to annoy the hell out of me that he somehow thought that he assumed I wanted to be filled in and take action against evolution being taught in schools and such, but it wasn't worth the confrontation to tell him to STFU.

Well. One of these things he sent me a few years ago was about how the Harry Potter books were teaching our kids satanism and witchcraft and such. Now this thing was sent in all seriousness, with quotes from children (something about sucking Satan's "gigantic black cock", I don't quite recall). Anyway, he was dead serious that this was a problem that all "good christians" should take immediate action against.

Now I would normally just delete these things after getting a good laugh, since I really do like the guy despite this kind of evangelical nonsense. What caught my eye was the link to the article he was quoting from - it was (ta da) from The Onion. I nearly fell out of my chair at work from laughing so hard.

Holy Fucking Shit

[Bonker]

As you read through it, you can just see the raw emotions in every article in that issue - it reminds me every day I look at it what that day was like.

The Holy Fucking Shit [theonion.com] edition of The Onion was one of the finest pieces of literature serious or satirical published about the September 11 bombings. Before the HFS edition, I merely thought The Onion was funny. Afterwards, I respected The Onion.

In the middle of all the hysteria, screaming panic, and horror, The Onion *dared* to go in and examine the ridiculousness of not only what had happened but what was happening because of it.

Good work guys!

We are a nation of red-ass baboons...

[phillymjs]

...because we need coffee cups that says "Caution, contents HOT!" and commercials that have "Don't try this yourself" at the bottom of the screen as the SUV being advertised drives vertically up the side of a skyscraper and parks on the roof. In another few years, they'll probably have to interrupt movies every 15 minutes with a slide of text bearing a disclaimer that says, "The events you are watching are not really happening, but are fictional." Actually, this has already happened once [imdb.com], in 1983.

~Philly

To be a scientist...

[joshyc]

It's probably just the massive amount of caffeine circulating through my system right now but this quote made me laugh for a solid 5 minutes:

"To be a scientist, you have to learn all this weird stuff, like how many molecules are in a proton,..."

Taken from: http://www.theonion.com/onion3821/science_hard.htm l

Oh well, back to studying for chem.