Radio host tricked by Onion story on drones at Obama’s inauguration

The Onion strikes again.

A radio host fell for a fake story from the satirical website that showed a doctored image of a “drone flyover” on President Barack Obama’s inauguration day.

The post on the Facebook page of KFAI host Andy Driscoll was surfaced by City Pages, which pointed out that Driscoll, who hosts “TruthToTell” on the community radio station in St. Paul, Minn., had written "ugly" underneath an image that showed what appeared to be three remote-controlled drones hovering ominously over the enormous crowds.

Driscoll's posting sparked a long comment thread, including this from Kristin Tapper: “1984 is no longer fiction.”

Driscoll seemed to agree: “Never seen three in a cluster formation like that, but they're obviously scanning the crowd for potential trouble—all monitored by a site in Las Vegas.”

But even when Driscoll learned the story was fake, he argued that it felt true: “There's a reason the Onion can make satire out of this photo, which was obviously doctored to give us a laugh (ceremonial drone flyover, indeed! HA!), is that satire is a stretch of the truth."

The radio host shouldn't feel bad about being fooled; after all, the Onion got China's main newspaper, People's Daily Online, to run a story announcing that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had been named Sexiest Man Alive.