On 24 October 2016, a "satirical" news site published a story that opened with a shockingly frank quote from conservative commentator and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan:
“Back in the ‘50s everyone knew their place, whites over here, blacks over here, Mexicans over here and the women were at home raising the kids,” said Buchanan in an interview with the Conservative Chronicle. “Things functioned better when everyone understood where they needed to be.”
The story does not link to the alleged interview — which makes sense, as the quote is completely fabricated. The Standard owns up to its true nature in a disclaimer on its "About" page:
The Business Standard News is a satirical site designed to parody the 24-hour news cycle. The stories are outlandish, but reality is so strange nowadays they could be true.
However, the "interview" was still picked up by at least one actual news site, with no mention of its satirical bent. To further muddy the waters, there actually is a site called the Conservative Chronicle, in which Buchanan's syndicated columns appear. They reiterated to us that there was no way the quote was real:
We don't do interviews at the Conservative Chronicle.
Buchanan, who has run for the presidency as both a Republican and Reform Party candidate, has a history of making eyebrow-raising comments, including dismissing President Barack Obama and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as affirmative action beneficiaries, and defending the idea of a majority-white U.S. as "an America like the country I grew up in, which was a pretty good country."