Ex-Alex Jones employee reflects on job at Infowars: 'It was nonsense. It was lies'
By: the Guardian
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Former Infowars video editor and field producer spoke on his experience working on the show in an NPR interview
A former video editor and field producer for Alex Jones's Infowars has said his work for the notorious conspiracy theorist was "nonsense" and "lies", but he kept at it for four years in his 20s because the far-right media company's founder was a magnetic presence and it earned him good money.
Josh Owens made those revealing remarks in an NPR interview published on Tuesday promoting his new memoir about once having been an employee of Jones and Infowars - a conversation that also detailed the hand he said he had in fabricating a video of an operative of the Islamic State (IS) terror group sneaking into the US from Mexico immediately after a beheading.
"In Jones's world, it was all about making things look cinematic," Owens, who left Infowars in 2017, said to NPR. Likening the aesthetic to that seen in pieces by Vice News, he continued: "We would go out there, we would shoot videos … like we were in the weeds, we were showing what was really going on.
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"But it was nonsense. It was lies."
To illustrate the point to the outlet, Owens recounted how Infowars deployed him to El Paso, Texas, after a conservative website alleged that IS had erected a training base right on the other side of the US-Mexico border, specifically in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua.
But the Infowars team didn't unearth any evidence to support the allegation - so it instead dressed a reporter up to resemble an IS operative, equipped him with a severed head prop and filmed him crossing a stream that the outlet falsely claimed was the Rio Grande on the border.
By the first morning after its publication, the video of that scene had scored 1m views, as Owens put it to NPR.
"We just happened to find a little stream that looked like it could be the Rio Grande," Owens said. "We said we were on the border. The reporter I was with simulated the beheading, walked across and that's what we posted."
Infowars did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Owens's NPR interview. NPR said it also did not get an answer to a request for comment from Infowars.
Owens described how his job troubled him - yet he forged on because of the good pay and the fact that he perceived Jones to be an engaging force. He ultimately changed his mind when he flew home from a different work trip next to a Muslim woman with a young girl.
"I remember sitting there watching her, and it sounds so cheesy, but it was just this moment of [thinking]: 'These people didn't do anything,'" Owens said. Seemingly alluding to the Islamophobia stoked by the fake video he said he helped create on the trip to El Paso, he added: "There's no reason for suspicion - it's just racism.
"It's not like after that I changed everything and all of a sudden became a good person or started to do the right thing. But it did start to make me look at things a little bit differently."
Owens told NPR that leaving Infowars wasn't easy because his sense was that it was "kind of black mark" on his resume that he worked for Jones. He said Jones himself would boast to his employees: "You cannot exist in the world outside … here because you are connected to me."
According to Owens, he wrote The Madness of Believing: A Memoir from Inside Alex Jones's Conspiracy Machine to explore various questions about his decision to work for Infowars.
"Why was I there? Why did I do these things? Why did I stick around for so long?" Owens said to NPR. "I don't have all the answers now, but I think exploring it and asking those questions and taking accountability was just sort of part of the process."
Owens appeared in the 2024 HBO documentary The Truth vs Alex Jones. In the film, he discusses how Jones was furious when an Infowars crew including Owens failed to find evidence of high radiation levels in California some time after the Fukushima nuclear accident across the Pacific Ocean in Japan.
Jones at the time was using his Infowars show to sell a supplement marketed as protection against radiation. "Did we think he wanted us to lie?" Owens said of Jones in the documentary. "Yes - it was obvious."
Owens was also deposed when the parents of the children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting successfully sued Jones for lying about how the mass murder in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax staged by crisis actors to promote stricter gun control in the US.
The US supreme court in October refused an appeal from Jones to overturn the $1.4bn defamation penalty that was awarded to the victims' families.
Owens told NPR that the Sandy Hook massacre took place between when he was offered the Infowars job and when he accepted the role. He said his memoir doesn't spend much time on Sandy Hook because he was distracted at the time with undertaking the business of actually joining Infowars.
"I think, if I'm being honest … I wasn't paying attention to those things," Owens said. "I never worked on reports about Sandy Hook."
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Look at this man- he looks like he could be Trumps brother.
In other MAGA news -
Something tells me alcohol and/or drugs was involved both times.
He defintely had the munchies
Shocking /s
It seems like what this guy was participating in was deliberately creating panic for a paycheck. It’s illegal to yell FIRE in a crowded theater, but LE is okay with falsely telling a national audience there are terrorists at the Rio Grande cutting off heads?
Some of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters now believe he has no political future.
Alex Jones, the bankrupt host of InfoWars , claimed that Trump is “done” and too sick to remain in the Oval Office.
“When your ankles swell up three times the size they were before, that means heart failure,” Jones said on an episode of the Alex Jones Show Tuesday. “And he does look sick. He does babble and sound like the brain’s not doing too hot. And so, we just cut bait on Trump, and we just mobilize against the Democrats. And we mobilize against the neocons, we primary them, and we just fight even harder.”
Jones noted that there was a new conservative wave taking over the country that has involved a “Christian reawakening” that Trump has nothing to do with.
“Trump is just a minor figure in all of that now,” Jones said. “We need to be sad about Trump. This is not funny, this is not good, but he’s gone. And that’s it.”
Jones went on to compare Trump to his own grandfather, who Jones said was “not there” in the last year of his life due to dementia.
He also suggested that members of Trump’s Cabinet, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were “freaked out” about Trump’s health but too loyal to speak out.
“We need to pray for other people to be awakened … because we’re in so much danger,” Jones said.
The 79-year-old president has repeatedly claimed that he is in pristine condition, brushing off public alarm over his deteriorating body, but several health scares over the last several months have sparked questions over his ability to remain in office.
The large bruises on his hands—often covered with ill-matched makeup—have become a near routine fixture on the president’s aging body as they shift from hand to hand. The White House has blamed the superficial injuries on handshaking and aspirin, though doctors have suggested that the bruises could be a warning sign of something more serious.
Other symptoms of Trump’s deteriorating condition have been more concerning, such as the sagging mouth and drooping expression he sported in September during 9/11 memorial ceremonies, causing some onlookers to suggest that the president could have suffered a stroke.
The next month, Trump spent hours at Walter Reed Medical Center. The White House refused to disclose the reason, but eventually Trump let slip that he had received MRI scans, the results of which he said came back “perfect.” At least one former White House physician questioned the timeline of Trump’s appointment, pointing out that his four-hour visit to the hospital was far longer than would be required by an MRI test. Trump later revealed he might not have gotten an MRI at all, but something “less than” that.
Trump has also appeared discombobulated and lethargic during critical meetings with world leaders. Over the course of the last year, Trump has fallen asleep roughly a dozen times during critical public appearances. It has happened during Cabinet meetings, in the middle of bombastic military parades, while meeting leaders of critical allies, and even during the Pope’s funeral .
So sad- it brings a tear to your eye.
If this fat lump of grease think I'm gonna listen to anything he says then he also has grease for brains.
Didn;t know he was a Christian Nationalist. Maybe with this whistleblower people will stop listening to him
... boo hoo hoo, it sucks being an unamerican magatard ... boo hoo ...
If only more on the right would have such revelations. It is interesting to note that a big reason this guy was engaged in this for years was because there was a well-paying market for this kind of pig slop. Just like the only reason smugglers take such risks to bring in illicit drugs is because of the huge market for them. The only reason Info Wars existed and lied to those fucking morons was because they were begging to be lied to and throwing money at the liars. Lies are the very foundation, the backbone of rightwing conservative ideology, so it's no mystery why Info Wars was started and why it was relatively successful until being exposed. Can't really blame them though for taking advantage of such willing rubes, such ripe gullible fruit all lined up begging to be lied to and their pockets picked. Morons.