Fox News Claims Satirical News Site 'The Onion' Has '4.3 Trillion Daily Readers' After Falling for Satirical Description

Fox News mistakenly reported as truth a claim by satirical news outlet The Onion about it having trillions of daily readers, falling for a tongue-in-cheek line on the site.

The Onion has long been a parody of real news outlets, consistently publishing outlandish claims. One of them, which can be found on the website's About section, says The Onion has 4.3 trillion readers a day, something that was taken literally by Fox News.

A Fox News reporter shared the fake stat on live television during a broadcast about Alex Jones' Infowars being sold to The Onion, while another reporter also wrote about it in an article.

"The Onion bills itself as 'the world's leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events' and says it has 4.3 trillion daily readers," the article reads.

While The Onion humorously boasted about its enormous readership, the claim was meant as parody.

"The Onion is the world's leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events. Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1756, The Onion now enjoys a daily readership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history," The Onion's About section reads.

The incident sparked laughter on social media, with many mocking the network's inability to distinguish between satire and fact.

"LOL. I can't believe they actually said that," one X user wrote, while another added, "Yes, we all read it several thousand times per day."

At the time of writing, Fox News has not acknowledged the mistake.