FC: Debunking a hoax: CNN video did show Palestinians cheering attacks

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[I've received probably dozens of forwarded email messages, each
spreading the same urban legend and falsely claiming CNN aired file
footage. Time to kill this lie before it spreads any further. --DBM]

---


http://www.snopes2.com/inboxer/outrage/cnn.htm
                                      
   Claim:   CNN used old footage to fake images of 'Palestinians dancing
   in the street' after the terrorist attack on the USA.
   
   Status:   False.
   
   Origins:   Cutting straight to the chase, no, CNN did not air
   decade-old footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets. Eason
   Jordan, CNN's Chief News Executive, confirmed that the video used on
   CNN was in fact shot on Tuesday, 11 September 2001, in East Jerusalem
   by a Reuters TV crew, not during the Persian Gulf conflict of 1990-91
   -- a fact proved by its inclusion of comments from a Palestinian
   praising Osama Bin Laden, whose name was unlikely to have come up ten
   years earlier in connection with the invasion and liberation of
   Kuwait. As well, the person who made the claim quoted above has since
   recanted.
   
   The footage was real. It's a shame, in fact, that its provenance was
   doubted because the lives of journalists who have attempted to capture
   similar acts on video have been threatened. That this tape made it out
   at all is a miracle.
   
   Yet even if the footage had been recycled from an earlier time, we
   have to ask why there would have been an uproar over it. Credible
   journalists were on hand and were observing the celebrations. If they
   hadn't been able to make video recordings to display as a backdrop to
   their reports, would harm have been done if stock footage were run
   instead, footage that would give the viewing audience a far better
   idea of the feel of events than a flat voice-only report would have?
   
   News shows continually make use of stock film clips when the images
   called for by the piece are so mundane it would be foolish to send a
   news team to film fresh shots. No one needs to film that particular
   day's herd of tourists entering the White House when stock footage of
   other tourists doing exactly that is sitting in a newsroom's archive
   and can be run as a backdrop to a reporter's piece on a
   Whitehouse-related story. Likewise, stock footage can be used when
   actual footage is impossible to come by.
   
   The primary issue should not really be whether older video footage was
   used to represent a current event, but whether the news of event was
   reported accurately. That is, was it correct to report that at least
   some Palestinians were "celebrating" the news that terrorist attacks
   had been made against the United States of America? Certainly CNN
   wasn't the only news organization to report that information, as other
   outlets such as Reuters and the Los Angeles Times carried the same
   story. Also, other news outlets such as Fox News and The Jerusalem
   Post reported that journalists were threatened for capturing images of
   Palestinian celebrations, making real footage of the event harder to
   obtain [...]



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