The satirical newspaper The Onion is facing Twitter criticism today after tweeting a story about congress taking a group of schoolchildren hostage. Earlier today, the Onion initially tweeted, “BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building.” And then the online screaming (and laughing) began.
Above, you can see all of the tweets The Onion has sent out on the story (thus far—they don’t seem to be letting up on it anytime soon). People were upset that the first tweet didn’t specify the absurdity of the story: “Ill-considered initial tweet leads to confusion among readers. Satire usually has context.
