We’ll keep it short here, folks. Don’t be fooled by posts at this website.
I’m in several online forums in which people with shared political sympathies exchange views, links, and information, and more than once, I’ve seen correspondents forward links to National Report posts, apparently thinking they are serious.
National Report is described by some as a “satire” site; it appears to me to be more of a parody site, posting what purport to be indignant stories, from a supposed right-wing perspective, about the fictional shenanigans of the political left. The site has been compared to The Onion, but one difference (for me) is that Onion is actually funny. Another difference is that much Onion material is satire. It’s meant as a send up, not as a tool to entrap the unwary.
There’s a high-profile case of such entrapment. In October, a Fox News host referenced a National Report post as if it was serious. (The report claimed that Obama was keeping a Muslim museum open during the government shutdown. Someone forwarded a link to me at the time, so I remember the parody story.)
Of course, National Report is just one of the sites out there fooling media professionals. In February, a Washington Post writer was taken in by a fake “interview” with Sarah Palin published by the Daily Currant.
Caveat lector.
