CNN admitted on Monday that it was fooled by Syrian Air Force intelligence officer Salama Mohammad Salama, who posed as a hapless civilian prisoner named “Adel Gulbal” in order to get him released on camera.
Network desperately contests ratings pushed The video gained attention as a viral sensation, but journalism disaster In that hand.
A day after Salama was identified by an independent Syrian news network called Verify-Sy, CNN admitted it had been deceived. Verify-Sy accused CNN of abandoning good journalistic practices in its madness to create “extraordinary” viral videos.
Many other online critics pointed out that CNN missed some obvious signs that the “Adel Gulbal” story didn't add up. That included the simple fact that he seemed surprisingly sturdy and well-groomed for a man who would have been without water or food for three years. was held captive for three months by the notorious Syrian intelligence service.
CNN's embarrassment was compounded by the fact that the reporter duped by Salama was chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward. Ward briefly stated that Salama's identity was confirmed on her X account late Monday afternoon and has not posted anything since.
More than 24 hours after Verify-Sy gave CNN the scoop on the identity of a celebrity “freed prisoner,” CNN is following in the footsteps of the Syrian network. talked to people The city of Homs confirmed that the prisoner was actually a brutal thug accused of corruption and torture.
A resident of the Bayada district of Homs provided CNN with a photo of the same man allegedly at work in what appeared to be a government office. Facial recognition software found a more than 99 percent match to the man CNN met in a Damascus prison cell. The photo shows him sitting at a desk, clearly in military uniform. CNN is not publishing the photo to protect the anonymity of the source.
As CNN continued to pursue information about the freed prisoner after the initial report, multiple Homs residents said the man was Salama, also known as Abu Hamza. They told CNN that he is known to run the Air Force Intelligence Directorate checkpoint in the city and accused him of extortion and harassment.
At the end of the report, CNN grudgingly thanked Verify-Sy and acknowledged that they had lost contact with the monster they helped free.
The damage to CNN's reputation had already been devastating, and CNN was not a network that could afford another journalistic scandal. Most of the network's prominent employees promoted Ward's video as a remarkable piece of groundbreaking journalism before Salama's true identity was known.
Media Research Center (MRC) noticed On Tuesday, CNN announced that Ward's video spent a “huge” 56 minutes of airtime on “repeated broadcasts and subsequent flattery.” The saturation coverage continued into the early hours of Saturday night, just as Verify-Sy dropped its CNN prize video bombshell debunk.
“After airing the footage for the first time, The Lead host Jake Tapper gushed that Ward's reporting was 'just extremely remarkable' and 'another' example of 'vital journalism.' But Ward himself took these claims as gospel,” MRC writes. .
Al Jazeera News quotation It infuriated Syrian and international critics who demanded an apology from CNN, in which it thoroughly explained why it did nothing to identify the man it rescued from prison in a viral video.
It should be noted that some such critics question CNN's claim that Salama easily fooled the station's senior foreign correspondent in a very obvious ruse. These critics suggest that the network was so desperate to boost ratings that Salama staged the entire scene knowing it was a fraud. CNN continues to maintain that it did not know the man in the video was a Syrian intelligence agent.
Several other journalists have come forward to defend Ward, including Trey Yingst, the far more popular chief foreign correspondent for Fox News.
Ingst, like Ward, submitted Last week, a video report from a Syrian prison was released during the search for Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in Syria in 2012. The discovery last Wednesday of another American, Travis Timmerman, languishing in a Syrian dungeon raised hopes that Tice might also be found.
