Reporters covered the correspondents' dinner shooting in real time. Conspiracy theories still spread
So much information, streaming out in so little time. And still: Within minutes, conspiracy theories flooded the internet.
The shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner attended by President Donald Trump on Saturday night played out in front of some of the nation's most powerful reporters and editors who snapped into action in real time to provide detailed accounts from the scene.
What resulted was a steady stream of facts from myriad reputable media outlets — hardly an information vacuum. Despite this, unfounded conspiracy theories from both the left and the right proliferated, chief among them that the shooting was staged. Some spread in spite of the facts, while others used real information to create false narratives.
Jen Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland who studies conspiracy theories, said a lack of trust in institutions and an inability to sort fact from fiction create a “textbook recipe” for such rumors. But, she said, even when an abundance of information is available the entertainment value of conspiracy theories can still prevail.
“The thing about conspiracy theories that makes people enjoy them, even if they're not politically extreme, is that you get to go looking for breadcrumbs,” she said. “It's a way to feel smart and accepted when you come up with a nugget to contribute and people like it.”
Some possible avenues of speculation were shut down before they could begin because of the live reporting being presented — and corroborated in real time — by hundreds of professional journalists at once. Plenty still made it through.
One prevailing (and unfounded) theory: The shooting was somehow staged, perhaps as a distraction from issues such as the Iran war, or as a push for the completion of Trump's White House ballroom. The latter has been tethered to the facts that Trump pointed to the incident as evidence his ballroom is needed and that the president's Justice Department is using it to try to pressure preservationists into dropping a lawsuit over the $400 million project.
Others speculated without credible evidence that the Israeli government or military played a role — an allegation often used as an antisemitic trope. And press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during an interview with Fox News before the dinner began that “there will be some shots fired tonight in the room" — a metaphorical reference to Trump’s planned speech that was used as evidence she had prior knowledge about the shooting.
Many found parallels between what happened at the correspondents' dinner and during the attempted assassination of Trump in July 2024 during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, such as the fact that after both shootings there was a delay before the president was removed from the scene. Some cited video of Vice President JD Vance being escorted out of the room first as evidence that Trump and the Secret Service knew the shooting was going to happen.
Emily Vraga, a professor at the University of Minnesota who studies political misinformation, said that sometimes more information is not necessarily better, especially in such a polarized time when people can pick and choose the facts they like and assemble their own narrative puzzles.
“We just can't process that much information,” she explained. “And so when there is just this flood of information and it's contradictory and ever-changing as new information comes in, that can actually reinforce this tendency to go to a simplified, understandable narrative. And that narrative can include conspiracy theories.”
She added, “Meaning doesn't have to be tied to reality."
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