The 5 Best Satirical News Sites
Satirical news, and the organisations that create this content, aims to parody the mainstream media through providing fake insights about an on-going real news event or make whatever stories they want up to their hearts content. In this multimedia age, news satire or ‘fake news’ has become more popular than ever due to how easy it is to access, share and laugh at the content these jokers come up with. More than often they can be taken as real pieces of news, only to further humour those who are in on the joke. Brilliant, right? Here’s a rundown of the 5 best satirical news sites in the game at the moment.
- The Onion
The Onion is arguably the pinnacle of news satire today. Beginning as a print paper in 1988 in the US and going online in 1996, the Onion specialises in presenting mundane, everyday activities as breaking pieces of news. Such articles as ‘Hungover Man Horrified To Learn He Made Dozens Of Plans Last Night’ and ‘Man Returns To Work After Vacation With Fresh, Reenergized Hatred For Job’. They are deadpan in tone and have proven controversial at times, willing to go for celebrities and members of the establishment. Due to the Onion’s large following, the articles are often shared on social media — leading many people who are none the wiser to the Onion’s antics believing the news they put out. As 2016 has ended, the Onion has written an article highlighting their favourite reader interactions over the past 12 months.
2) Clickhole
As Buzzfeed and clickbait sites rule the landscape of the internet, the brains over at the Onion felt that they needed to have an answer to this. Cue Clickhole, ‘because all content deserves to go viral’. Born in 2014 Clickhole is essentially the Onion’s younger brother which clearly parodies Buzzfeed, even down to the colour scheme, and the blogging community as a whole.
What makes Clickhole especially special is just how broad the content they produce is and just how strange it is in character.
Expect quizzes, videos, clickventures and a whole load of listicles. What makes Clickhole especially special is just how broad the content they produce is and just how strange it is in character. The writing Clickhole offers is as tight in rhythm as the Onion’s but is arguably more biting, with articles such as ‘I Don’t Let My Kids Watch Winnie The Pooh Because I Don’t Want Them Idolizing A Fat Virgin’ and ‘Beautiful: Make-A-Wish Sent Chris Pratt To Meet An 8-Year-Old Fan Trapped In A Burning Building’. Keep on doing your thing Clickhole, we love you for it.
3) Private Eye
Private Eye is arguably one of, if not, the most highly regarded satirical publications to date. So much so, the fortnightly magazine which has been around since the 60s is Britain’s best-selling public affairs magazine.
The Private Eye is strives to teach its readers not to take the establishment at face value, don’t believe everything you’re being told and that nobody is above a good old fashioned dressing-down.
The Private Eye is staunchly anti-establishment, heavily criticising and parodying politicians and any figure they feel needs a dressing down. The Private Eye is just not satire however, they do in-depth investigative journalism into under-reported scandals that the mainstream press fail to cover. The magazine is largely print-based, however their website does have a rolling news section which changes every so often and gives you an insight into what articles the current copy has. You can check that out here. The Private Eye is strives to teach its readers not to take the establishment at face value, don’t believe everything you’re being told and that nobody is above a good old fashioned dressing-down.
4) The Daily Mash
If you take everything positive about the Onion and combine it with dry British humour and two former editors of the mainstream British press, what you’ll get is the Daily Mash. The website was formed in 2007 and creates absurd news stories, insightful political satire and an agony aunt in the form of a small child named Holly. The Daily Mash is brilliantly British in its eccentricity and equally as cutting, with winning headlines such as ‘Genuinely puzzled Keith Richards survives 2016’ and ‘May’s New Year’s resolution is to have one successful policy’.
5) Newsthump
Newsthump is a UK based satirical news site with one true and simple aim, ‘to mock absolutely everyone, eventually.’ It’s that aim which drives Newsthump’s content, with no political bias, nothing to gain from fact-checking and never letting the truth ruin a funny story. Killer headlines produced by the team include ‘Hull named 2017 British City of Culture for a joke’ and ‘Queen missed second church service following conversation to Satanism’. Newsthump has been one of the fastest growing sites of its kind since its inception in 2009 and clearly parodies the BBC, with an almost identical website layout, colour scheme and font. Watch this space.
