National Affairs Magazine:Two Bangladeshi papers have been forced to apologise after publishing a story taken from satirical US website The Onion that claimed Neil Armstrong’s 1969 Moon landing was faked.

The satirical article claimed Armstrong had been convicted by a conspiracy theorist that had “been living a lie”. The Daily Manab Zamin and The New Nation picked up on the story without realising the Onion was not a genuine news site.

National Affairs Magazine

National Affairs Magazine: But the story raises the wider question on the role satire and comedy play in the news. In Britain, TV has a tradition of programmes including news quizzes Have I Got News For You and Mock The Week, that showcase the talent of our comedians while discussing current affairs. Other classic examples include The Day Today, Brass Eye and Bremner, Bird and Fortune.

National Affairs Magazine: These aims call for the long form of the essay, and the long view of the quarterly, and all the more so because both run against the grain of our time. They call also for a particular approach to public problems. National Affairs will have a point of view, but not a party line. It will begin from confidence and pride in America, from a sense that our challenge is to build on our strengths to address our weaknesses, and from the conviction that chief among those strengths are our democratic capitalism, our ideals of liberty and equality under the law, and our roots in the longstanding traditions of the West. We will seek to cultivate an open-minded empiricism, a decent respect for the awesome complexity of life in society, and a healthy skepticism of the serene technocratic confidence that is too often the dominant flavor of social science and public policy. And we will take politics seriously.

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