CNN aired a high-profile report last week in which journalist Clarissa Ward ostensibly discovered a “forgotten prisoner” languishing in a windowless cell in Syria. The man claimed he had been arrested by dictator Bashar Assad three weeks earlier and was not aware the Assad regime had since been overthrown by rebels. On Sunday, an independent news service claimed CNN’s celebrity prisoner was actually a Syrian intelligence agent who tricked the network into giving him positive media coverage.
Ward, who is CNN’s chief international correspondent, found the “prisoner” huddled beneath a blanket when she entered the headquarters of Syrian air force intelligence in Damascus accompanied by a rebel fighter, who dramatically shot the locks off prison doors as they explored the facility.
The seemingly abandoned prisoner they discovered said his name was Adel Ghurbal. He claimed he was arrested three months earlier and left behind in his windowless cell when the intelligence facility was abandoned. He said he had not been given food or water for three days, the time elapsed since the victorious rebels entered Damascus and drove Assad into exile.
Ward dramatically escorted the prisoner to freedom, soothingly repeating “you’re okay, you’re okay.” She would later describe the encounter as “one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed” during her twenty-year career as a journalist.
“We were looking to do a story about the tens of thousands of Syrians who have vanished into Assad’s dungeons, and particularly also about one American journalist, Austin Tice, who was ‘disappeared,’” Ward explained.
Ratings-challenged CNN pushed the video clip of Ward freeing the prisoner onto social media, hoping to create a viral sensation. Other CNN employees pushed the story as a landmark achievement in journalism, frequently echoing Ward’s own description of the piece as “extraordinary”:
The network’s social media campaign immediately ran into pushback from alert viewers who said some of the details of the story did not add up.
On Sunday, a Syrian independent news platform called Verify-SY called CNN’s report a hoax, identifying the “prisoner” as a Syrian air force intelligence officer named Salama Mohammad Salama, also known as “Abu Hamza.”
Verify-Sy described Salama as a “notorious” operative of the Assad regime who “managed several security checkpoints in Homs and was involved in theft, extortion, and coercing residents into becoming informants.”
Salama’s activities included killing and torturing civilians, some of whom were arrested “without cause, or on fabricated charges.” Some of his victims were “targeted simply for refusing to pay bribes, rejecting cooperation, or even for arbitrary reasons like their appearance.”
Sources in Homs said Salama was indeed arrested recently, but it was “due to a dispute over profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer.” These sources suggested Salama posed as a prisoner in Damascus, staging his rescue by CNN in order to “garner sympathy” after the fall of the regime he served.
Verify-Sy called CNN out for sloppy journalism at best, noting that the network did no shoe-leather reporting to verify Salama’s identity before turning him into a viral sensation.
The independent platform also said CNN overlooked some very obvious clues that Salama was not on the level, such as his remarkably robust appearance for a man who supposedly went three days without food or water, and the way he occasionally forgot to act weak and terrified while talking with Ward and her camera crew.
Furthermore, the “prisoner” did not blink when walking into bright daylight, even though he supposedly lived in a windowless cell for over 72 hours, and he showed no signs of abuse or torture despite a total of 90 days in the hands of the notoriously brutal Syrian intelligence services.
“As Syrians first and journalists second, we must ask: Did CNN deliberately mislead its audience to rehabilitate Abu Hamza’s image, or did it fall victim to misinformation? And if the latter, what led the network to this mistake, especially when Syrians have succeeded in exposing crimes and violations that the world at large has failed to document over decades?” Verify-Sy asked.
CNN quickly went into damage-control mode as its big viral scoop turned into a gigantic embarrassment. On Sunday, CNN said it has “subsequently been investigating his background and are aware that he may have given a false identity.”
“No one other than the CNN team was aware of our plans to visit the prison building featured in our report that day. The events transpired as they appear in our film,” CNN said in a statement on the controversy.
“The decision to release the prisoner featured in our report was taken by the guard – a Syrian rebel. We reported the scene as it unfolded, including what the prisoner told us, with clear attribution,” the network insisted.
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