Comment: Social media gets 'thanks' for conspiracies' tenacity

By Jim Warren / For the Chicago Tribune

I vividly remember the gruesome wreckage of the United States’ worst aviation disaster. I was among the first reporters to see the burning remnants of a DC-10 near O’Hare International Airport on May 25, 1979. The crash killed all 271 people on board and two people on the ground.

What I don’t recall are absurd conspiracy theories about why American Airlines Flight 191 to Los Angeles dropped from the sky and exploded after takeoff, incinerating people beyond recognition.

It’s a universe from last week’s Baltimore bridge collapse. As detailed by NewsGuard and PolitiFact, we encountered these nonsensical claims: The cargo ship was the victim of a cyberattack that caused a power loss; the collapse was a false flag to divert us from the police raid of rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Miami home as part of a sex trafficking investigation; and it was Israeli revenge for the U.S. abstaining from a United Nations resolution calling for a Gaza cease-fire.

And these: The Russians did it because the ship captain was Ukrainian (he is not); the crash was predicted in a Barack and Michelle Obama-produced Netflix movie; and Senate Minority Leader Mitchell McConnell’s late sister-in-law was somehow at fault, an assertion premised on the erroneous claim that she worked for the cargo ship’s Singapore owner.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-social-media-gets-thanks-for-conspiracies-tenacity/