My hunch is that most of my readers are familiar with The Onion, a satirical online news site that uses the conventions of the news business to satirize mainstream news. There are many reasons for its success but I think its ability to closely imitate the style and substance of real news is an important element in its success -- the story may be absurd or obscure but the form makes it look believable. The humor derives at least in part from our recognition that the Onion's fake news is just a small step from what passes as real news. Not surprisingly, Onion stories sometimes get picked up as real news by other media sources. On the other hand, life sometimes imitates art and the Onion's satire becomes reality as was the case with the war in Iraq. (I wrote about it here).

In doing some research yesterday I came across this Onion report released on the day after the presidential election in 2012 (notice how closely the video follows the conventions of cable news):