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Iran's News Agency Picks Up Onion Story

Posted by timothy on from the makes-them-cry dept.

J053 writes "FARS, the Iranian news agency, ran a story about a Gallup poll which showed that 'the overwhelming majority of rural white Americans said they would rather vote for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than U.S. president Barack Obama.' '"I like him better," said West Virginia resident Dale Swiderski, who, along with 77 percent of rural Caucasian voters, confirmed he would much rather go to a baseball game or have a beer with Ahmadinejad.' Only problem was, it was a story from The Onion. Not only that, they took credit for it! The Onion responded by stating that 'Fars is a subsidiary and has been our Middle Eastern bureau since the mid 1980s.'"

8 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. What's next? by unix_core · · Score: 5, Funny

    What's next? They're gonna steal fox news stories?

    1. Re:What's next? by MysteriousPreacher · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A lot of what happens in the U.S. appears to be satire. I along with a lot of people got taken in by the Romney airplane window thing. We've heard so many odd things from senior politicians and candidates that it's really not easy to discern the poes from the nutters. The U.S. has elected officials wasting time trying to push creationism in to the science class, obsession with abstinence only education, and this odd idea that universal health care is synonymous with Bolshevism.

      Not saying we're perfect though. We have homeopathy and other crazy shit coming out of our earholes. We have vaccine denialism, denial of climate change, people who function daily in a modern society while still believing that an invisible guy in the sky is listening to their heaven-sent words, and organic/natural products being fetishised.

      We have a Daily Mail led army of middle aged white guys, simultaneously angry and despondent, because immigrants and queers are giving their houses cancer. Had a discussion the other night with a long-term Daily Mail reader, and it was a Gish gallop of nonsense and generalisations. Not a good sign when someone hurls vitriol at a group called "them", without taking the time to clarify membership of this group (i.e. "pakis"), it's pretty clear that the Mail is strong in them. Fun fact: The reason why crime is running out of control in the UK (despite statistics showing a long trend of decline), is that police recruitment is focussing too much on gays and women, and should instead only have tall straight men (presumably white) on the beat.

      A lot of this stuff doesn't really surface in public debate. A politician in the UK claiming that pregnancy resulting from rape probably isn't legitimate rape would be retiring to spend time with the family. The UK is generally secular, and religion tends to be more a personal and understated thing, so a politician pushing to have Jewish myths taught as science would largely be dismissed as some kind of nutter. In the U.S. there seems to be more support available for the extreme views. I'm writing as an outside, so do please correct me if I'm wrong here.

      --
      -- Using the preview button since 2005
  2. Some background by mabedan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Fars news is owned by Iran's revolutionaty Guard, and is Iranian government's biggest propaganda tool. This website was among the many other government driven sources which anounced Ahmadinejad's "victory" 3 hours before the polls were over...

    1. Re:Some background by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      anounced Ahmadinejad's "victory" 3 hours before the polls were over...

      So it is similar to our fox news?

    2. Re:Some background by unix_core · · Score: 5, Funny

      Oh, I thought it was one of those non-propaganda Iranian news agencies ;)

  3. Re:For sure! by amck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most reliable? If you're talking about Fox News, I think you are referring to the 'fair and balanced' coverage Fox News frequently advertises. Fox isn't claiming to be any more 'reliable' for reporting news

    If Fox News was reliably bad, you could simply take their headlines and invert them to find out the truth. In order to be completely useless it actually has to get things right occasionally.

    --
    Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist
  4. Re:For sure! by QQBoss · · Score: 5, Informative

    Errr, Glenn Beck hasn't worked for Fox News in over a year.

    I live in China, don't watch Fox News (or any other American television channels), and even I am aware that Fox/NBC/CBS/ABC don't run straight news shows during prime time- they run them between 5 and 7 pm or 10 and 11:30 or so, depending on the time zone, because running news during their most profitable hours would put them out of business. So why is Fox News unserious for running commentary at the times when they can maximize profits with other programs just as their competitors do with Monday Night Football, Law & Order, The Simpsons, etc...?

    Oh, wait, I misunderstand, you are comparing Fox News to MSNBC and CNN who run hard news with no shock-jocks during their prime time schedules like Hardball with Chris Matthews, The Rachel Maddow Show, PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton, Anderson Cooper 360, and Piers Morgan Tonight(*). Oh... wait... now I get it, you are saying that there is no serious news reported in the USA except for CNN Headline News! That's the ticket!

    * I had to actually search for all those TV show names, if some of them aren't on the air anymore, my bad.

  5. Re:For sure! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Few here will believe you. They're so biased against FoxNews (though few have actually watched it), that anything said in FoxNews' favor just flies over their little adolescent heads. They'd rather get their news from Jon Stewart (or worse, MTV).

    People who get their news from the Daily Show are better informed than those who watch Fox News: http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/confirmed/.