Yesterday, ABC News World Tonight issued a “correction” on Twitter for falsely representing video from an event at a Kentucky gun range as footage of Turkey’s military action in Syria:
CORRECTION: We’ve taken down video that aired on “World News Tonight" Sunday and “Good Morning America” this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy. ABC News regrets the error.
— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) October 14, 2019
What, exactly, gave ABC News the idea that the footage “appeared to be from the Syrian border”? Well, the Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy may be able to shed some light on that:
NEW: ABC News regretted sharing fake Syria bombing footage actually from a Kentucky gun range, but didn’t explain how that mistake was made. I think I’ve figured it out — it was Twitter disinformation shared days before by a former top Turkish politician.https://t.co/ezdTbkXXxN
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) October 15, 2019
More from Dunleavy:
İbrahim Melih Gökçek, a Turkish politician in President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s governing Justice and Development Party, shared the video on Oct. 9 in a viral tweet to his more than 4 million followers with a caption in Turkish that celebrated bombs being dropped on the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, known as the YPG. “How much of the ammunition the U.S. had given to the YPG, would you say, was destroyed in one go?” the tweet said.
Here's İbrahim Melih Gökçek — til recently mayor of Turkey's capital Anakara & a shameless conspiracy theorist — sharing the vid w/ his 4+ million followers days before ABC. He's celebrating the fake bombing of Kurds by Turks.
? https://t.co/ezdTbkXXxNhttps://t.co/cXgkLCABZn
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) October 15, 2019
Here’s the tweet:
ABD’NİN YPG’YE VERDİĞİ MÜHİMMATIN BİR SEFERDE NE KADAR’I İMHA EDİLMİŞTİR DERSİNİZ?? pic.twitter.com/spDFTtS3qi
— İbrahim Melih Gökçek (@06melihgokcek) October 9, 2019
Dunleavy continues:
Aykan Erdemir, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former member of the Turkish Parliament, confirmed the translation with the Washington Examiner. “That is indeed the source of this piece of misinformation,” Erdemir he said. “Melih Gökçek, the former mayor of Ankara, is notorious for being a social media troll, as well as for running disinformation campaigns.” He added, “He was infamous for spending more time trolling on social media than governing Turkey’s capital city as mayor.”
ABC said Monday, “We’ve taken down video that aired on ‘World News Tonight’ Sunday and ‘Good Morning America’ this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy.” It did not explain how they found the false footage and did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s questions about Gökçek’s tweet.
ABC News didn’t respond, huh? Go figure! Guess admitting that you’re cruising Turkish propagandists’ Twitter feeds for Trump-shaming material isn’t a great look.
They cropped people out of it and claimed "civilians" were being killed.
They knew it was fake.
— WiZecraX (@wizecrax) October 15, 2019
So the journalists didn't bother confirming or vetting the information and they just ran with it. We already knew that and it is still 100% their fault for pushing fake information.
— Jason Hamden (@HamdenJason) October 15, 2019
100% their fault … and they likely will face no long-term consequences for it.
That doesn’t explain how it happened, who did it, and what will be done about it.
— Joel (@Happyja) October 15, 2019
