American author and political consultant Naomi Wolf has attracted a storm of criticism after dismissing photos of Ebola facilities and videos of Islamic State beheadings as “propaganda”.

• Naomi Wolf in protest over Gaza ‘genocide’

“Of course pics from the Ebola scene in Texas now show waste management workers walking in the door with no hazmat suits on … of course a new British hostage has been allegedly beheaded in a video with no media skiing [sic] if it is a real video … the propaganda is coming too fast for me to keep up with. Tempting to throw in the towel … ” the 51-year-old wrote on her Facebook page.

According to Vox.com, in a previous post Wolf also demanded that beheading videos filmed by ISIL militants be verified for authenticity, implying they had been staged.

“It takes five people to stage an event like this,” Wolf wrote of the hostage beheading videos, including one featuring British journalist James Foley.

“Two to be ‘parents’ – two to pose for cameras … one in a ninja outfit … and one to contact the media that does not bother checking who ANY of these other four people are.”

The post has since been deleted.

@penkill Here it is, for your reference. pic.twitter.com/H5RxHZEXAp

— Graeme Wood (@gcaw) October 4, 2014

Wolf has just under 100,000 followers on Facebook and, in the last 24 hours, has posted 27 times.

While her frequent musings draw many supporters who hail her for her “diligence” and “honesty”, Wolf’s recent posts have been met with some backlash.

“How thoughtless and selfish of you Ms Wolf. The aid worker who died has a family who are now grieving and yet you say it’s all made up! Your conspiracy theories are growing a bit thin,” one Facebook user wrote.

Wolf, who is best known for her 1990 book The Beauty Myth, has since made an effort to explain her posts, saying she was attempting to encourage “actual journalism”.

“For the record…sigh…internetland, I am not ‘calling into question the authenticity of the ISIS videos’,” Wolf wrote on Sunday.

“I don’t KNOW if they are authentic or not – no one can – because no one that I am aware of has found a second source for them. I am not making ANY assertions or drawing ANY conclusions. I am just…engaging in journalism which requires two independent sources before you can post or publish something as true.”

Wolf also suggested that her past career as a political advisor had made her wary of news reporting.

“If I did not witness as a political consultant that national politics is most often – almost always – the deal coming before the narrative or the bill, the initiative, the crisis, the drama, the story wrapped around it to justify it – a narrative which usually does not resemble the deal at all or refer to it in any way and which is all that almost everyone else ever sees – I would not know to look deeper at the news,” Wolf wrote.

I had absolutely no idea that this was what’s become of the feminist Naomi Wolf whose work I respected http://t.co/IRLedEGjOj — Stephanie Nolen (@snolen) October 6, 2014

In a new low, even for her, Naomi Wolf suggests there’s something fishy about the ISIS beheadings. https://t.co/m26Mu1AQai — John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) October 4, 2014