[wordup] Debunking a hoax: CNN video did show Palestinians cheering attacks

[Adam Shand]

Via: politech at politechbot.com
From: http://www.snopes2.com/inboxer/outrage/cnn.htm

[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]

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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