News website confuses Obama satire with reality

A joke by the American satirical newspaper The Onion appears to have got lost in translation.

An Iranian news agency picked up – as fact – a story from the paper about a supposed survey showing an overwhelming majority of rural white Americans would rather vote for the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, than the US President Barack Obama. But it was made up, like everything in the satirical newspaper.

The English-language service of Iran's semi-official Fars news agency re-published the story yesterday.

The Onion's editor, Will Tracy, put out a tongue-in-cheek statement saying: "The Onion ... commends the journalists at Iran's finest news source on their superb reportage."