NBC News’ former “disinformation” reporter has become CEO of the fake news website The Onion.
“NEWS: My friends and I now own and run The Onion. I’ll be the CEO,” Ben Collins announced Thursday on X. “We’re keeping the entire staff, bringing back The Onion News Network, and share the wealth with staff. Basically, we’re going to let them do whatever they want. Get excited.”
Collins, who covered “disinformation, extremism and the internet for NBC News” according to his old author page, has not tried to hide his left-wing political leanings, often firing off liberal missives on social media. He was so furious over Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter that it reportedly got him temporarily banned from covering the billionaire in 2022, and he fumed over the reporting about the “Twitter Files” that revealed internal communications between Twitter employees as they made the decision to block the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop reporting in 2020.
NBC NEWS REPORTER BEN COLLINS REPEATEDLY ATTACKS, RIDICULES ELON MUSK WHILE COVERING TWITTER OWNER
Former NBC News “disinformation” reporter Ben Collins is now the CEO of the satirical news website The Onion. (MSNBC)
In September, Collins threatened to leave journalism in 2024 “unless things dramatically change” but teased that he had been working on his “white whale stories to cap it off.” He only had one story published since then, which was a critical piece on Musk’s handling of Twitter (now named X) in October.
Collins had only six articles with his byline published between April 25, 2023 and April 25, 2024, the latest one being more than 200 days ago. During that time, he made various appearances on MSNBC, though he has not appeared on-air since early January.
Collins also drew attention in 2022 when he appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to discuss the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs. He tied the shooting to anti-LGBT rhetoric from the far-right that he’d covered and wondered what he as a reporter could have done to stop it, and he suggested in an X post that conservatives didn’t care if transgender people died. Critics on the right jumped on Collins and called him a self-serving grandstander milking a tragedy for his own ends, while progressives praised his emotional display.
In his final stretch at NBC News, Collins made more headlines from his social media posts. In December, Collins was angered by the media’s reporting of the plagiarism scandal that plagued the now-ousted Harvard University President Claudine Gay.
Collins was reportedly benched by NBC News from covering Twitter owner Elon Musk over his repeated attacks on the billionaire. (Getty Images)
The New York Times reported Thursday that Collins “was a senior reporter at NBC News until recently.”
It is unclear when exactly Collins officially parted ways with NBC News. The network did not respond to Fox News Digital‘s request for comment.
The satirical publication The Onion was founded in 1988. ( Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The Onion, the long-running satirical publication now seen as the liberal version of The Babylon Bee, was sold by its parent company G/O Media to the newly-founded firm Global Tetrahedron, which is named after one of The Onion’s running gags.
According to the Times, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said in a memo, “The site’s new owners have agreed to keep The Onion’s entire staff intact and in Chicago, something we insisted be part of the deal.”
That wasn’t the case for Deadspin, the liberal sports blog G/O Media sold last month to a European firm, which laid off its entire staff.
Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.
