TheQuartering [10/13/2023]
Video shows CNN staged a news report in which its correspondent and her team sheltered in a ditch near the Israel-Gaza border during a rocket attack.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The video’s audio was altered to make it appear the CNN team was being directed by someone off screen. In the actual report, which can be viewed on CNN’s website, a correspondent for the network describes the attack as it happens.
THE FACTS: As Israel prepares for a possible ground assault on the sixth day of the latest Gaza war, some on social media are sharing an edited version of a real CNN report, claiming it is evidence the network faked the segment.
The edited video shows Clarissa Ward, CNN’s chief international correspondent, and her team take cover in a ditch as rockets explode nearby. A man’s voice, which sounds as though it is coming from a phone, gives directions such as “try and look nice and scared” and “can you boost the volume on those explosions, please?”
“CNN EXPOSED FOR FAKING AN ATTACK IN ISRAEL,” reads one post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that shared the edited footage. It had received approximately 35,100 likes and more than 19,200 shares as of Thursday.
While the sound in the video being shared online was altered, the footage itself is real.
Emily Kuhn, a CNN spokesperson, wrote in an email to the AP that the audio “is fabricated, inaccurate and irresponsibly distorts the reality of the moment that was covered live on CNN.” She added that people should watch the real CNN report “in full for themselves on a trusted platform.”
In the actual report, Ward explains that she and her team had taken cover due to “a massive barrage of rockets” that they could then hear being intercepted by the Iron Dome, Israel’s missile defense system. Once it is safe, she shows viewers the area where Hamas launched a deadly incursion into southern Israeli towns on Saturday, igniting the current conflict, and gives an overview of what happened that day.
At least 2,700 people, from both sides, had been killed in the war as of Thursday. Thousands more have been wounded.
