In its pro-Palestinian coverage of the escalated violence in the Middle East, CNN used faked video footage showing Palestinian “victims” of Israel’s rockets being dragged off the streets.
On November 15, Anderson Cooper hosted a report by CNN correspondent Sara Sidner. During the wind up to her report Cooper played a few video snippets of “victims” being dragged off the streets of the Palestinian held areas.
But one of those “victims” wasn’t a victim at all but was instead a man merely acting injured all for the benefit of western cameras.
Worse, this particular faux victim video is a well-known fake. Breitbart News already posted about this “Pallywood” theatrical extravaganza.
CNN isn’t the only Old Media outlet that falls for fake Palestinian videos. There is a famous video that caused a contentious court case in France back in 2008. It was a fake video supposedly showing a young Palestinian boy named Muhammad al-Dura being shot at by Israel’s Defense Forces. At first, the video caused international outrage, but in time it was proven to be just Palestinian street theater. No Muhammad al-Dura was ever shot.
The BBC also has a long history of anti-Israel bias.
How do these fake videos continue to end up in western news coverage? It is because few western news organizations actually have any news crews on the ground in these affected areas. Throughout the Middle East western news outlets rely on “stringers” to get video of events. In this case, a stringer is a Palestinian who takes his own video and then sells it to western news agencies. This leaves western news agencies naturally open to faked, Palestinian propaganda. But, all these western news agencies know this is happening and they continue to use it.