Good day all. Things haven’t been going well for CNN for a long time. Thanks to their manufacturing the news over the last few years, their credibility has gone right down the toilet. They have put politics ahead of actually gathering and providing information to people and their ratings have suffered. (The recently lost to the Food Network) You would think that they would learn that you should research things first. Nope, they haven’t.
The recent collapse of the Assad regime was a major news event, and CNN was there. However, the idiots that work for CNN seem to have forgotten that their job is to cover the news, not become the news. They decided that freeing a torturer was a great idea. Here are the details from the New York Post:
The prisoner CNN helped free from a secret facility in Syria was actually a notorious member of Bashar al-Assad’s forces known to torture those who refused to pay him off, according to a shocking local fact check.
The network went viral last week with footage of the startled prisoner being led from the prison by journalist Clarissa Ward, who called it “one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed” in her 20 years of reporting.
There was just a small problem with this.
But “independent and unbiased” fact-checkers Verify-Sy published a detailed report Sunday saying that the seemingly innocent prisoner was actually Salama Mohammad Salama — a first lieutenant in Syrian air force intelligence with a long history of alleged war crimes.
“We have subsequently been investigating his background and are aware that he may have given a false identity,” CNN acknowledged to The Post. “We are continuing our reporting into this and the wider story.”
Oops! These fools couldn’t be bothered to actually “Check the facts” and helped get someone out of jail that should be swinging from a tree. Nice going!
The CNN story last week showed Ward and a camera crew, escorted by a rebel fighter, visiting a former Syrian air force intelligence headquarters in Damascus and freeing the man who was found under a blanket locked in a windowless cell. He gave his name as Adel Ghurbal and claimed to have been arrested by government authorities three months earlier — and said he had no idea the Assad regime had collapsed.
Oh, I think he knew and when the jail break happened, he ducked into a cell to cower in terror that one of his victims might find him and “Do unto him what he had done onto others.” I will give the benefit of the doubt right now that the “Rebels” weren’t aware of who he was at that moment. It wouldn’t have taken long to find out.
Verify-Sy noted, however, that he appeared “well-groomed, and physically healthy, with no visible injuries or signs of torture — an incongruous portrayal of someone allegedly held in solitary confinement in the dark for 90 days.” He also “did not flinch or blink even when gazing up at the sky” despite having said he had not seen sunlight for three months.
Then Verify-Sy did the work that CNN couldn’t be bothered to do and checked the prison records. The found that there is no record of anyone named Adel Ghurbal in the region.
Known as “Abu Hamza,” Salama worked at several security checkpoints in Homs and was involved in theft, extortion and coercing residents into becoming informants for Assad, local residents told the fact-checkers. He also killed civilians during the Syrian civil war in 2014 — and allegedly detained and tortured young men on bogus charges, many of whom refused to pay bribes, Verify-Sy reported.
Yeah, this guy was a real prize winner. Apparently he got locked up a couple of week before when he got into a bit if a “Business dispute” with a high ranking officer. I suspect a Colonel or higher. It seems he wasn’t all the interested in “Sharing the wealth.”
CNN denies allegations that the piece was fabricated.
On that I will tend to agree. While CNN is not shy about manufacturing news, this was more along the lines of not actually getting out and doing the work. Laziness rather then lies.
The struggling news network was also forced to defend Ward’s work last year, when she was accused of staging a report near the Israel-Gaza border showing her and her crew hitting the crowd amid a barrage of rocket strikes. A doctored version of the live shot — with fake audio of someone directing the action — caught fire on social media with many believing it was real.
Now that sounds more like the CNN we’ve all come to know and despise. I can see why people would think she made stuff up. She’s done it in the past. In the olden days, when a reporter made stuff up, they were pretty much run out of the business. These days, we don’t have a lot of reporters, we have “Journalists.”
They are not known for actually doing the work that a reporter would do and also inserting themselves into a story that they should just be covering. Granted, sometimes things happen and a reporter might have to do something that goes beyond reporting facts and details, but that usually involves saving a life or helping the injured. Journalists today just regurgitate whatever the Democrat Party tells them to do. As for CNN? They need to fail completely. Then someone can come in, buy the assets dirt cheap and rebuild from the ground up. I wonder if Elon Musk might be interested?
Thatisall
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