1 week Ago By Erik Ortiz and Andrew Kirell
The sale of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ media empire is a major blow to one of the defining independent media brands that ushered in a new era of fringe thinking, mainstreaming conspiracy theories once banished to the edges of the internet. And while Jones’ Infowars brand is now owned by the satirical news site The Onion , media researchers and conservative media experts say its legacy will live on thanks to the far-right media ecosystem it helped inspire, which continues to flourish. “Right-wing media is robust and only becoming more robust,” said A.
J. Bauer, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Alabama who focuses on conservative news. And with some emboldened after Donald Trump’s 2024 election win, “this can be a race to the bottom in terms of misinformation and the radical right.
” The Onion, which has repeatedly lampooned Jones on its website, acquired Infowars on Thursday in a bankruptcy auction with the support of several families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, who successfully sued Jones after he repeatedly called the massacre a hoax. Infowars’ website was quickly shut down after Jones confirmed during a broadcast on X that The Onion won the auction for assets belonging to his company, Free Speech Systems. He later returned to broadcasting from another studio, telling his audience he was forced to vacate the Infowars facility in Austin, Texas, and needed its help with legal donations to fight the “fake bidding process.
” The Onion said in a statement that it plans to “end Infowars’ relentless barrage of disinformation” and “replace it with The Onion’s relentless barrage of humor for good.” The company is working with the anti-violence organization Everytown for Gun Safety, which said it will be the exclusive advertiser on the revamped Infowars site. Jones, 50, founded Infowars in 1999, first broadcasting from his home before spinning it into a small media empire that grew an audience with his brand of incendiary rhetoric , which over the decades has included calling 9/11 an “inside job” and claiming the government was using chemicals to turn people gay.
But behind the conspiracy-laden comments was an innovative business model that deviated from that of Jones’ contemporary, the conservative talk radio giant Rush Limbaugh . Jones “was a pioneer,” said Reece Peck, an associate professor of media culture at the City University of New York-College of Staten Island. “He was already broadcasting through his website while doing his syndicated talk radio show.
When YouTube came on the scene, he leaned in. He was subsequently copied by everyone who came up after him.” The rise of platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and others that initially had lax moderation rules and embraced algorithmic recommendation systems provided fruitful ground for Jones and a new generation of far-right voices who gained traction especially as they began to coalesce around Trump.
And Trump’s embrace of often-baseless conspiratorial rhetoric — from questioning the birthplace of President Barack Obama to claiming widespread election fraud — has lent an air of legitimacy to Jones and others, linking them together and often emboldening them. “Your entire future hangs in the balance with Trump being successful and us being successful,” Jones said Thursday. Jones’ following reached its height by the mid-2010s, Peck said, as he showcased “his clownish behavior, ripping off his shirt and screaming during broadcasts.
” Peck said Jones can also be credited with creating conflict with political adversaries and using that division to drive views. But while Jones snagged a high-profile interview in 2015 with then-candidate Trump , the subsequent fallout of the Sandy Hook lawsuits has hobbled him financially and hurt his persona. YouTube and other social media platforms began removing Jones’ videos in 2018 as they were flagged for violating content rules related to violent and graphic content.
He was suspended from Facebook and Twitter, significantly reducing the reach of Infowars. “The mark of whether he has influence may be if the politically powerful see him as useful or not,” Peck said, “and by politicians not going on his show, I guess that suggests his influence is waning or nonexistent.” But Josh Owens, who worked for Infowars from 2013 to 2017, said Jones’ legacy lives on in how conspiracy-minded outlets have made big business of undermining any sense of “objective truth.
” “It doesn’t seem to matter what’s real or what’s not real. People are going to believe what they want,” Owens said. “And I think Alex Jones has played a huge role in that.
” For further evidence of that legacy, said Owens, a former Infowars video editor, look no further than the current U.S. political landscape.
Jones “has been far more wrong than he’s right, but he’s constructed this narrative and this world where it doesn’t matter,” he said. “You see Trump doing the same thing.” “Just a complete erosion of trust and truth,” he added.
Beyond Infowars, a sizable and thriving world of pro-Trump media that often traffics in conspiracy theories continues with few limitations, especially as major social networks have rolled back some of their moderation policies that once sought to limit the spread of false claims and extreme rhetoric. And some on the right have even succeeded in building or buying their own platforms — most notably Elon Musk in his purchase of Twitter and in the rise of the video platform Rumble. Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor of digital platforms and ethics at the University of Oregon, said the loss of Jones’ original Infowars appears to be one way to hold him accountable.
However, she said, there are other influencers, who, like Jones, will find their spaces in a changing media ecosystem in which audiences are shifting away from traditional news sources and turning to social media and podcast personalities for information. “What is going to happen with Infowars ‘Onion-ified,’ and what is going to happen to the kinds of internet conspiracy theorists who Alex Jones represents?” Phillips asked. “There is going to be a fertile ground for them as ever before.
” “Infowars may be gone,” she added. “Alex Jones is not.”.
