CNN is acknowledging {that a} gripping story it aired final week depicting a Syrian man being let free from a Damascus jail after the autumn of dictator Bashar Assad’s regime was not what it appeared.
The community mentioned that it has since discovered that the person proven in correspondent Clarissa Ward’s report, which initially aired on Dec. 11, apparently gave a false id.
“This moment captures the complexity of the situation in Syria,” CNN’s Jake Tapper mentioned on Tuesday.
Within the report, Ward was being escorted by a Syrian insurgent by a jail that had been run by the Syrian Air Power intelligence providers and emptied for the reason that Assad authorities fell. That is 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 is light!” when led open air and hugged the guard when instructed of the change in energy.
He instructed Ward that his identify 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 hung out in three totally different prisons.
However a couple of days later, a Syrian fact-checking web site, Confirm-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 facial recognition software program, discovered that it was a greater than 99 % probability that was the identical man from their report, the community mentioned.
Ward mentioned Tuesday that CNN did not know why he had been arrested. Confirm-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 few of the earnings, she mentioned. CNN has been unable to verify that or find Salama, she mentioned.
A CNN spokeswoman mentioned that nobody outdoors 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. Whereas CNN did due diligence and analysis in uncovering the issue after the very fact, the query is whether or not the community might have, or ought to have, executed extra to confirm the prisoner’s story earlier than it was used.
“I think we need to be humble about the challenges,” Ward mentioned on the air Tuesday. “It is a chaotic atmosphere, there is a huge amount of flux, and it is very difficult to verify information in real time on the ground … Stories take unexpected turns. We have to continue to report them without fear or favor, but it is immensely challenging in this environment and I think we need to be transparent about that.”
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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Observe him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
