One sentence of background, because that's all the event deserves here: on Sunday night, hours after real American strikes on Iran resumed, the president posted a 10-second AI-generated clip to Truth Social captioned "Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!!" — and Kharg Island, the terminal that handles about 90% of Iran's oil exports, was not attacked. A US official confirmed the military never targeted it. The head of Iran's national oil company, Hamid Bovard, called the posts "laughable" and said conditions on the island were "calm and appropriate." * So every newsroom on earth woke up Monday holding the same object: a fabricated bombing video, published by the commander-in-chief of the military that would do the bombing. There is no style guide for this. Which is exactly why watching four of them caption it is so instructive. * Reuters did the whole job in one line: "Trump posts AI video of Iran's Kharg in 'smithereens'" — with "no evidence" riding right behind it in the same headline. What he posted, what it was, what didn't happen. The body copy is even flatter: "the videos were generated by AI and no such attack took place." No adjectives, no eyebrow. The wire treated a fake airstrike the way you'd treat any other claim that fails verification: said so, moved on. This is what the job looks like. * RT went with "Trump posts AI videos of Iran's Kharg Island oil hub" — the AI label sitting right there in a Russian state headline. Before anyone hands out a medal: a US president posting fake bombast about a war is not a story RT has to be brave to run, it's a story RT gets to enjoy. But note the mechanics anyway. The outlet with the most obvious axe to grind still decided the word "AI" belonged in the headline, because without it the headline would be doing the video's work for it. * Al Jazeera's headline: "Vance says Trump 'sending a message' to Iran with AI-generated video." The label is there — but look who's the subject of the sentence. Not the president who posted a fake attack; the vice president who explained it. By the time you've read the headline, the fabrication has already been upgraded to "messaging," in the White House's own vocabulary, quote marks and all. Vance's actual explanation, in Al Jazeera's body: "You guys are behaving like a terrorist country. You've got to stop or there are going to be some consequences." And, of the president's posting habits: he "likes to switch it up on social media a little bit." A fake airstrike, filed under variety. * And then Fox. The banner on Fox's live blog: "Trump teases retaliation on Kharg Island after Iran strikes US bases in Jordan." We flagged this exact banner yesterday for its clock — the American strikes that opened this round had fallen out of it entirely. Today, look at the other word. "Teases." A tease is a movie trailer. A tease is a coming attraction. In Fox's headline grammar, the fabricated bombing isn't a false claim about the war — it's a preview of the next episode. To be fair to the people below the banner: Fox's own entries call the videos "AI-generated" and carry the Iranian "laughable" quote. The reporting knows it's a fake. The headline is marketing it as a promise. * Here's the awkward part for us. Two days ago we published a guide on how newsrooms verify video before publishing — trace the earliest version, get the original file, and above all, call the person. Nobody wrote the chapter for when "the person" is the president, the answer to "did this happen" is no, and he posts it anyway. The verification system actually worked this weekend: Reuters checked, officials denied, the label went on. Where it wobbled was the headline layer — the only layer most people read. * Why this matters, beyond the genre novelty: markets move on pictures of burning oil infrastructure. In 2023, one fake image of smoke near the Pentagon knocked the S&P down in four minutes — and that one wasn't posted by the account that commands the actual missiles. When a fabricated strike is a "tease," every real headline about this war now has to spend its first words proving it isn't a trailer too.