The Onion Proposes Licensing Deal to Take Over Infowars

US satirical publication The Onion has proposed a new plan to take over Infowars, the media company run by right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The proposal, which requires approval from a judge, would involve a licensing arrangement that would allow The Onion to publish its own parody content on Infowars' platforms.

A previous attempt by The Onion to buy Infowars outright was rejected by another judge. Jones has reportedly said he will also resist the new effort.

Infowars faces liquidation after families of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 won a legal case worth hundreds of millions of dollars against Jones for spreading false claims about the 2012 massacre. At one point Jones called the attack in Connecticut, which killed 26 people, "a giant hoax". In 2015 he said: "Sandy Hook is a synthetic, completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured."

Jones later acknowledged that the killings were real and insisted his statements were covered by US free speech protections. But relatives of the victims won defamation judgements against Jones and his company over his false statements.

Jones declared bankruptcy in 2022 as the Sandy Hook case made its way to court, and in June 2024, a judge ordered the liquidation of his personal assets. But later that year, The Onion's winning bid to buy Infowars was dismissed by a judge, who raised concerns about the sale and ruled that the auction process did not result in the best bids possible.

The latest step in the long-running legal saga has seen Jones appealing against a ruling that would liquidate his company. The licensing deal envisaged by The Onion would run for six months initially, with an option to then renew for another six.

Jones was quoted by the AP news agency saying that he would fight the latest proposal from The Onion, and would continue to broadcast "the exact same show".

The Onion's chief executive Ben Collins said the Sandy Hook families would receive profits from the new venture if it was approved by the judge. Collins told AP his vision was to "create a bunch of characters and worlds" that were designed to parody online personalities who spend their time "staring into their camera and just like coming up with conspiracy theories or telling you health hacks that will actually get you poisoned, things like that".