Can you really believe anything you read in the Onion . . . ?
Of course you can. And there's the late night news programs with Jay Leno, David Letterman, Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Fallon -- well, just to name a few. So bipartisan, and they never, ever stretch the truth.
Seriously, though, the germ of truth in any workable joke is there, otherwise the joke would be a non-event. Where that germ might lie, though, could require a modicum of research.