News Story on Neil Armstrong Slips on an Onion

Two newspapers in Bangladesh have issued a retraction after publishing an article taken from the popular but satirical website “The Onion” which claimed Neil Armstrong had been convinced by conspiracy theorists that the Moon landings were faked. The Daily Manab Zamin said Armstrong had shocked a news conference by saying he now knew it had been an “elaborate hoax.” The New Nation then picked up the story, and only later did they realize the Onion was not a genuine news site.

Both have now apologized to their readers for not checking the story. “We thought it was true so we printed it without checking,” associate editor Hasanuzzuman Khan told the AFP news agency.

“We didn’t know the Onion was not a real news site.”

The article said Armstrong had told a news conference he had been “forced to reconsider every single detail of the monumental journey after watching a few persuasive YouTube videos and reading several blog posts” by a conspiracy theorist.

Of course, like everything else on The Onion, the story was completely made up.

The two newspaper articles drew a lot of attention in Bangladesh, and was one of the top articles getting hits on the papers’ websites.

Here’s the Onion’s article.