Who owns The Onion? All about the acquisition of Alex Jones' InfoWars
On Thursday, November 14, The Onion, a satirical news outlet, revealed on its official website that it had won the bid for Alex Jones' Infowars at a bankruptcy auction on November 13. According to Reuters' report from November 15, the news organization noted in a statement on Thursday that it wants to substitute the "noticeably less hateful disinformation" for "Infowars' relentless barrage of disinformation.”
According to The Onion’s website, Ben Collins is the publication's chief executive officer, while Jeff Lawson is currently its owner and chairman. Additionally, Bryce P. Tetraeder is the CEO of its parent company, Global Tetrahedron.
Jones reportedly filed for bankruptcy protection in 2022, following the rulings by Connecticut and Texas courts that Jones purposefully defamed the families of the shooting victims in 2012.
The courts also mandated that he pay $1.5 billion to the families of 20 kids and six employees who died in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. Jones was forced to liquidate his assets, including Infowars.
The Onion bought Alex Jones' InfoWars after the latter went bankrupt
The auction, where The Onion bought InfoWars, had been authorized by a bankruptcy judge earlier this year, to enable the Sandy Hook families to collect reparations from Jones. It had opened sealed bids on Wednesday, November 13.
Alex Jones verified the acquisition when he uploaded a video on X on Thursday morning, claiming that the company had acquired his company. He described the bidding as "competitive.”
"The Connecticut Democrats with the Onion newspaper bought us. I just got word 15 minutes ago that my lawyers and folks met with the U.S. trustee over our bankruptcy this morning and they said they are shutting us down even without a court order this morning,” he said.
He continued:
“I don’t know what’s going to happen… They're shutting us down… but I’m going to be here until they come and turn the lights off..”
Jones declared that he would not back down from what he claimed were politically driven attempts to silence him and would keep speaking on other channels. On the other hand, according to a report by CBS News on November 15, Ben Collins stated in a message posted on the social media platform BlueSky that his firm had plans for Infowars.
"We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid website. We have retained the services of some Onion and Clickhole Hall of Famers to pull this off. I can't wait to show you what we have cooked up,” Collins stated.
The business also intends to shut down Infowars and relaunch the website with well-known online humor writers and content producers. Reportedly, about 1.5 hours after the transaction was made public, Infowars' website was taken offline.
Per Reuter’s, Ben Collins said in a statement:
"The Onion is proud to acquire Infowars, and we look forward to continuing its storied tradition of scaring the site’s users with lies until they fork over their cold, hard cash.”
However, the purchase price of The Onion was not made public. Nevertheless, in order to strengthen its bid and stop other right-wing content producers from continuing to air conspiracy theories on Infowars, the Connecticut families of the victims said that they consented to forego a portion of the money from the defamation rulings.
The auction took place after the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his company declared bankruptcy in 2022, after losing lawsuits from Sandy Hook families alleging defamation and mental distress for persistently claiming that the Connecticut school shooting was fake and orchestrated by crisis actors.