'The Onion' offers fake TV news

The Onion, the humorous spoof newspaper, stepped into the YouTube world on Tuesday with newscasts that are viewable on its Web site and which can be embedded into other Web pages. Like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and its offshoot, The Colbert Report The Onion videos are so realistic that if you didn't know that The Onion satirizes news, you might think it was legitimate.

One piece entitled "Immigration: The Human Cost" covers the plight of an executive at a Lucent Technologies who is fired and replaced with a Mexican immigrant. The downtrodden former executive is forced to sell his winter home and live solely in his summer home and work as a busboy at TGI Friday's because his wife refuses to work. In another talk show format piece, four pundits debate the merits of the U.S. government calling up civil war reenactors to fight in Iraq. "These reenactors, they've studied strategy, they've studied warfare and I think they're actually more prepared than the boys we're sending over now," one says.

In a promo, the Onion News Network promises news "that's faster, harder, scarier, all-knowing...You'll never read again." The spots are accompanied by ads from Dewar's Scotch Whiskey. People can subscribe to the videos via iTunes, get them on their TiVo or take them on their mobile phones with Helio.