Republican politicians were hoaxed over the weekend by an image purporting to be a downed US warplane crew member rescued by military special forces in Iran on Saturday, igniting a call for a national “crash course in media literacy”.
Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general and a US senate candidate and Mike Lawler, a New York representative, were all caught out for “liking” a fake picture of the airman, who has not been publicly identified.
Donald Trump on Monday afternoon was scheduled to hold a news conference in which he was expected to discuss details of the rescue mission.
The AI-generated image that fooled the Republican politicos was shared by a pro-Trump X account. The supposed airman is shown surrounded by smiling military members, with a US flag draped across his lap.
After Abbott’s error, Billy Binion of the libertarian magazine Reason wrote: “This kind of stuff is bleak. I get that we’re in a new era, but we desperately need a new crash course in media literacy, or just a reminder to be remotely discerning.”
Republicans are fooled by anything.
Came here to post that most of them have already been fooled into being republicans and how that tracks. Looks like y’all got this covered though.
We could save ourselves a lot of time writing Headlines by just cutting it off mid sentence.
Wag the dog.
There were also a fake image of an American soldier captured by Iranian soldiers, but I guess that one hadn’t a lot of track.
