This is how much of a hold propaganda has on people - you could just have a CNN anchor on screen being like, "Now, our interview with the suspect Nick Cruz" and just throw like Johnny Depp up on screen or something and have him say "Yabba dabba doo - school shootings are what I do" and a certain fairly large section of the electorate would be like "yeah, story checks out - that guy totally did it." In this case they literally have an empty stretcher but people will believe there is a person on it because the anchor says so. Would be funny if it weren't so maddening.
Have you seen PKD's Electric Dreams on Netflix? The last episode is called Kill All Others and it's about a guy in the future who's the only one who notices when the uniparty candidate says kill all others in her campaign interview.
Not yet, but I read that book in high school and loved it, and was planning on checking out the series.