Onion fools Chinese media again

Alexandra Petri:

The Onion triumphs again.

The satirical newspaper named North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un its “Sexiest Man Alive,” and the People’s Daily picked up the report, AP reports.

The state-run China paperannounced the news on its Web site with a 55-page slideshow of photos of Kim, showing him on a horse and quoting the Onion’s praiseof Kim’s “devastatingly handsome, round face, his boyish charm, and his strong, sturdy frame.”

This is not, as the AP points out, the first time this sort of mistake has happened. The Beijing Daily News fell for an Onion report in 2002.

And maybe this wasn’t a case of falling at all. Maybe they just realized this was the way to rake in page views.
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I find it hard to believe they could come up with 55 interesting pictures of the Nork leader.  Perhaps they thought their readers were as gullible as they turned out to be.