CNN is acknowledging {that a} gripping story it aired final week depicting a Syrian man being let free from a Damascus jail after the fall of dictator Bashar Assad’s regime was not what it appeared.
The community mentioned that it has since came upon that the person proven in correspondent Clarissa Ward’s report, which initially aired on Dec. 11, apparently gave a false identification.
“This second captures the complexity of the scenario in Syria,” CNN’s Jake Tapper mentioned on Tuesday.
In the report, Ward was being escorted by a Syrian insurgent by way of a jail that had been run by the Syrian Air Force intelligence companies and emptied because the Assad authorities fell. That’s what they thought, at the very least — till they stumbled on a padlocked door.
The insurgent guard shot the lock to open the door to a cell, the place they discovered a person hiding beneath a blanket. Clearly bewildered and shaking, he gulped water when supplied, mentioned “oh, God, there’s gentle!” when led open air and hugged the guard when informed of the change in energy.
He informed Ward that his title was Adel Ghurbal from the Syrian metropolis of Homs, and that he was a civilian who had been arrested three months in the past and frolicked in three completely different prisons.
But a couple of days later, a Syrian fact-checking web site, Verify-Sy, mentioned that the person was actually Salama Mohammad Salama, and that he was a former intelligence officer for the Assad authorities. CNN obtained a photograph of Salama and, by way of facial recognition software program, discovered that it was a greater than 99 p.c probability that was the identical man from their report, the community mentioned.
Ward mentioned Tuesday that CNN didn’t know why he had been arrested. Verify-Sy reported that Salama, who had a popularity for extortion, had been thrown in jail due to a dispute with a superior officer over sharing a number of the earnings, she mentioned. CNN has been unable to substantiate that or find Salama, she mentioned.
A CNN spokeswoman mentioned that nobody exterior of the community knew forward of time of the plans to go to the jail. CNN reported the scene because it unfolded, the community mentioned.
It was arresting video, and the temptation to air Ward’s story was apparent. While CNN did due diligence and analysis in uncovering the issue after the actual fact, the query is whether or not the community might have, or ought to have, completed extra to confirm the prisoner’s story earlier than it was used.
“I feel we have to be humble concerning the challenges,” Ward mentioned on the air Tuesday. “It is a chaotic ambiance, there’s a large quantity of flux, and it is vitally troublesome to confirm info in actual time on the bottom … Stories take sudden turns. We must proceed to report them with out concern or favor, however it’s immensely difficult on this setting and I feel we have to be clear about that.”
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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
