A video that went viral was edited to look like the featured CNN correspondent and her team were receiving instructions from a director on how to make the military conflict scene look more dramatic and more authentic. The original video without the supposed “instructions” was shared on CNN’s platforms and the news network also denied that the reporting team received any kind of instructions, writes Thuthmeter.
Under the content-sharing agreement between Truthmeter.mk and Meta.mk, we republish the text below:
A post on Facebook shared a video it claims shows journalists lying and acting under guided instructions in order to make the military situation seem more dramatic. Our fact-check proved that the video was edited.
Here’s one way how Western media lie, states the post.
Below is a video posted by Serbian newspaper Informer of a programme of theirs (which can be viewed in its entirety on their YouTube channel) with the headline: ”TOPIC OF THE DAY – Americans funded Hamas, they knew the war was coming!”
This is how the host of the programme presents the doctored video:
Let’s just look at CNN’s video on the field, just so you can see the level of manipulation involved. I think that everything will be clearer after watching this.
The video shows the CNN team running to hide from bombs, while a male voice can be heard giving the instructions where they should run and lie down. The camera focuses on journalist’s face as she tells her colleague holding the phone to look more frightened.
To emphasize the male voice giving out instructions, the host of the programme adds that “the sound should be turned up because the bombs cannot be heard loud enough”.
However, the original recording posted by CNN does not feature this male voice at all. It is obvious that it was added in and that the video was altered.
What did CNN publish on 9 October?
On 9 October CNN posted a video of correspondent Clarissa Ward and her colleagues hiding and running to protect themselves from the missile strikes near the Israeli-Palestinian border.
However, a version on posted on social media became viral containing the added sound, suggesting that the correspondent and her team were receiving instructions from a director. The original video showed CNN correspondent Ward upset and breathing heavily, while the man with her talks on the telephone and looking around occasionally. The video shared on Facebook has a male voice telling the journalists to get aside, lie down on the side of the road, get the cameraman closer and to try to look frightened.
As Raskrikavanje.rs wrote, the manipulative video was first published on the X account of The Quartering, claiming that CNN was caught staging the attack in Israel.
The original video published by CNN (archived here), does not have the audio with the “instructions”.
A longer video was shared on social media capturing the same moment that showed smoke in the air. American political journalist Brian Krassenstein shared a longer version of the video on X, praising CNN’s team.
On 9 October CNN published a longer version of the clip on its YouTube channel that runs almost nine minutes with the following description:
CNN’s Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward and her team were forced to take shelter from rockets near the Israel-Gaza border.
In the video (that also contains no instructions of any kind), Ward explains why they needed to take shelter, as the team heard rockets and numerous airplanes had been flying over the area they were in.
Many mainstream media reported on the fake video (Business Insider, New York Times), as well as fact-checking portals (AP News, Reuters Fact Check, Raskrikavanje.rs, Fact Crescendo, Snopes, Faktograf.hr).
From all of the above, we can conclude that the video that went viral was doctored so that it would look like CNN’s correspondent and her team were receiving instructions from a director, so as to make the scene of the military conflict seem more dramatic and more authentic. The original video without the “instructions” was CNN’s platforms, and the medium also denied that the reporting team received instructions of any kind on how to behave. Therefore, the post is assessed as untrue.
