• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

ABC News apologizes for airing Syria footage that was actually from Kentucky

F

FreddyE1977

ABC News has issued an apology for airing video during their newscasts which
reportedly showed Syrian Kurds under attack by the Turkish military after President Trump
decided to withdraw US forces.

Only problem is.....the footage actually came from a Kentucky gun show two years ago.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/v...tually_footage_from_a_kentucky_gun_range.html

DOH!

Apparently ABC was blown in by crowdsourcing. People who had been watching the video on YouTube for
a couple of years compared the two and raised alarm bells.
 
TheBigA said:
Were any of the facts of the story wrong? That seems more important than the video.
Click to expand...

It's television. The video should be accurate. If it's a re-creation, there should be at least a caption telling the viewer that. I'm not a "gotcha" right winger, nor any kind of right winger at all, but I am in the news business as a (fossilized) newspaper copy editor. No paper I've ever worked for would pass off a photo taken in the next town down the road as one taken in our town. If it was being used as an illustration -- say, a file photo of a police traffic stop to illustrate a story about DUI enforcement over an upcoming holiday weekend -- the photo will have "photo illustration" in its credit line. If we need a photo of a Ferris wheel to go with a story about an upcoming fair and we use one from some other event, we'll say so in the caption. ABC passing off Kentucky as Syria in video -- the primary element of television -- is just plain wrong.
 
CTListener said:
ABC passing off Kentucky as Syria in video -- the primary element of television -- is just plain wrong.
Click to expand...

If they knew that's what they were doing. There are a lot of people involved. But that shouldn't affect the facts of the story. Just because the pictures are wrong doesn't mean the story is wrong. They call that throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
ahh, so we can use fake video to sell a narrative that we all KNOW must be true!
Click to expand...

It's not "fake video." It just doesn't correspond to the story. In movies, it's called a production error. It happens all the time.

Are you saying the story isn't true and the Kurds are doing just fine? If so, why is the government now imposing sanctions? Whoops!
 
Movies do that intentionally, because studios can't afford to be shooting films based on documented historical events exclusively at their actual locations. Not to mention that many of the actual locations have been repurposed since or are just plain unavailable for shooting. The purists may grumble if they see our boys storming the beaches of North Carolina instead of Normandy, but audiences in general won't notice or won't care, providing the restaging of the real-life event is convincing enough. Journalism should be held to a higher standard. The narrative ABC is telling is almost surely accurate, in my opinion, but any sort of video fakery casts unnecessary doubt in the minds of the viewers. Stick to footage shot in Syria. If none is available, tell the story in spoken words, the other element of television.
 
CTListener said:
The narrative ABC is telling is almost surely accurate, in my opinion, but any sort of video fakery casts unnecessary doubt in the minds of the viewers. Stick to footage shot in Syria. If none is available, tell the story in spoken words, the other element of television.
Click to expand...

They recognized and apologized for the error. The error was in the video, not in the story. The story isn't a "narrative," it's actual facts. I'm getting tired of people using that word to describe real life.
 
I agree with CTListener. Airing incorrect video with a story is a factual error unto itself.

The whole point of a story from a war zone is to tell the public about the conditions on the front lines. The primary means of doing that on television, and especially for the style of ABC World News Tonight, is via video. Ergo using incorrect video creates a falsehood.

At least ABC was big enough to issue a swift correction.

Mosul is in Iraq, btw.
 
TheBigA said:
They recognized and apologized for the error. The error was in the video, not in the story. The story isn't a "narrative," it's actual facts. I'm getting tired of people using that word to describe real life.
Click to expand...

yeah, we live in a age where people chose the fake news over real news cause sometimes the fae news is more believable or entertaining than the real news.
 
TheBigA said:
It's not "fake video." It just doesn't correspond to the story. In movies, it's called a production error. It happens all the time.

Are you saying the story isn't true and the Kurds are doing just fine? If so, why is the government now imposing sanctions? Whoops!
Click to expand...

There is a fake, phony, photoshopped photo floating around the internet of
Joe Biden feeling-up some woman from behind. Something that Biden has been
credibly accused of doing.

So I suppose you would be OK with news outlets using that obviously fake photo
because the narrative has some truth to it?
 
FreddyE1977 said:
So I suppose you would be OK with news outlets using that obviously fake photo
because the narrative has some truth to it?
Click to expand...

Read what I said. I never said using the video was "OK." I said the authenticity of the video shouldn't automatically make the entire story a lie. The story was not a lie. The story is true, and people were attacked and in some cases killed. We need to recognize and come to grips with that story, even though one news agency made a mistake in the presentation of the story. The story is the story, even without any video. They recognized their mistake and very quickly apologized for it. That's the right thing to do. There is no shame in apologizing for making an error.
 
TheBigA said:
Read what I said. I never said using the video was "OK." I said the authenticity of the video shouldn't automatically make the entire story a lie. The story was not a lie. The story is true, and people were attacked and in some cases killed. We need to recognize and come to grips with that story, even though one news agency made a mistake in the presentation of the story. The story is the story, even without any video. They recognized their mistake and very quickly apologized for it. That's the right thing to do. There is no shame in apologizing for making an error.
Click to expand...

I'd be having an easier time just moving on from this if the video wasn't so outrageously disconnected from the story. I could understand it if footage from some other Middle East conflict had been used, but from a gun show in Kentucky? How does that happen, ever, especially at a huge network news operation? Even if ABC has several hard drives full of file footage, surely each item would have to labeled in sufficient detail so that no producer -- or producer's go-fer -- would ever pluck a clip of Kentuckians playing soldier or whatever they were doing from the same library that also contained genuine footage from a deadly serious situation half a world away.

But yes, I accept the events reported in the story as real, and I suppose I'll trust the apologetic ABC not to do something like this again. Just as, despite our deep political differences, I won't automatically assume a certain congressman from Florida is lying even though he attached a photo of a Soviet-era warship in his congratulatory tweet to the U.S. Navy the other day. (https://www.newsweek.com/florida-republican-mocked-us-navy-birthday-message-russian-ship-1464935)
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
Mosul is in Iraq, btw.
Click to expand...

Yes I know, I've actually been there. Fortunately for a relatively short time.

Unlike what some are claiming, I seriously doubt this incident was intentional.

All TV newsrooms, whether it's network or local news, stack their news blocks in something called a rundown. The rundown is a networked-commercial PC application which creates a timeline for the show that has the story script (feeds the teleprompter), associated graphics information (lower third data, graphical transitions, etc.), and any associated video clip information.

Sometimes it happens; an incorrect video clip or graphics number gets inserted in the rundown. Someone my have been in a hurry and inserted the wrong video cut number into that particular story withing the rundown. Some Intern is tasked with checking the rundown. Maybe they were in a hurry, and find a video cut of something blowing up.. 'Oh, that must be the clip for the story'. Whoops!
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom