The Pan-Arabia Enquirer: Satirical News About a Region So Sensational It’s Taken as Fact

You guys, the Pan-Arabia Enquirer is FAKE NEWS – think of it is an English-language Arab version of The Onion and The Daily Mash. It says it right there in their masthead:

And the reason we feel the need to share this is because it’s succeeded in fooling other oblivious, but otherwise credible, media outlets into believing that its (hilarious) content is true. Most recently, our friends at Cairo Gossip wrote up a post about a recent PAE news item announcing the supposed launch of an exclusive, members-only “Gold Class” car line between Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

The thing about the Emirates is that this kind of sensational, over-the-top shit happens all the time. Which is the point of the original (satirical!) article, so it makes sense that it flew right over CG’s heads.

A similar thing happened last August, when none other than the Huffington Post reported another one of PAE’s fake news items as fact. This time, it was about Jon Stewart’s visit to Jordan, which caused a social media flurry of people in Amman posting about how they had met the American Bassem Youssef.

In the original (again, satirical!) article, PAE claimed that the entire, literal phrase “Wow! I’ve just met Jon Stewart” was a top trend on Jordanian Twitter for three weeks, which HuffPo reported in an article featuring Instagram pics of Stewart with fans. The article has since been amended, but the new, awkward phrasing reveals traces of being hastily edited.

WE SAID THIS: It’s been said before and we’ll say it again: Don’t believe everything you read on the Interwebz, guys!