"There was once a time when the White House Press Secretary retweeting accounts of the novel deployment of high-tech weaponry against human targets would have been global news, but what goes unsaid is that in this previous timeline, the press secretary would have been citing an actual source, with a real story to share, rather than a piece of propaganda that has clearly been manufactured for an obvious purpose."
"The U.S. mainstream media, meanwhile, has long since made its peace with amplifying fake messages as long as they get to revel in the salacious content of a good, fake story, for clicks. And that's how we end up with major media sources reporting over the weekend that the United States was using devastating "sonic weapons" in its recent ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, despite the fact that the entire story comes back to Karoline Leavitt retweeting a single, clearly fake account."
"You can see why the likes of the shock-chasing Daily Mail or New York Post were unable to resist, what with phrases like "my head was exploding from the inside" and "some were vomiting blood" to be parroted back. Fox News also got on the bandwagon, wedging the word "claimed" into their headline to afford them the tiniest bit of wiggle room on their reporting."
High-ranking U.S. officials have eroded norms requiring responsible social media use by public servants, treating official accounts as unvetted amplification channels. White House amplification once relied on verifiable sources, but now retweets can propagate manufactured propaganda without substantiation. Major mainstream outlets have grown willing to amplify sensational, unverified content for clicks, enabling false narratives to gain wide traction. A recent claim that the United States used “sonic weapons” in an ouster of Nicolás Maduro traced back to a single retweet by Karoline Leavitt and was subsequently boosted by tabloids and partisan outlets seeking sensational impact.
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