Josh Owens, a former video editor and field producer for Alex Jones's Infowars, has revealed that his work for the conspiracy outlet was based on lies and fabrications. In an interview with NPR promoting his new memoir, Owens described how the team would stage events to create sensational content, including a fake video of an Islamic State operative crossing the US-Mexico border.
Owens recounted an incident where Infowars sent him to El Paso, Texas, after unsubstantiated claims of an IS training base in Ciudad Juárez. Unable to find evidence, the team dressed a reporter as an IS operative, used a severed head prop, and filmed him crossing a stream they falsely claimed was the Rio Grande. The video garnered 1 million views within a day.
Despite his discomfort, Owens stayed at Infowars for four years due to the high pay and Jones's charismatic leadership. He said Jones would tell employees they could not exist outside the company because of their association with him. Owens eventually left in 2017 after a flight with a Muslim woman and her daughter made him reconsider the Islamophobia his work promoted.
Owens's memoir, The Madness of Believing: A Memoir from Inside Alex Jones's Conspiracy Machine, explores his motivations for working at Infowars. He also appeared in the 2024 HBO documentary The Truth vs Alex Jones, where he discussed Jones's anger when the crew failed to find evidence of high radiation in California after Fukushima, as Jones was selling anti-radiation supplements.
Owens was deposed in the defamation lawsuits brought by parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims, which resulted in multimillion-dollar judgments against Jones for falsely claiming the massacre was a hoax.
