ABC News Caught Faking Footage of Turkey Assault on Kurds, Deletes Video and Admits Mistake
A segment on ABC News’ “World News Tonight” that aired last month showed video of a years-old military weapons demonstration in Kentucky and described the footage as being of a Turkish attack in Syria.
In the segment, anchor Tom Llamas portrays the video as an attack by the Turkish military on Kurdish civilians in northern Syria, Gizmodo reported.
“This video, right here, appearing to show Turkey’s military bombing Kurd civilians in a Syrian border town,” Llamas says.
“The Kurds, who fought alongside the U.S. against ISIS, now horrific reports of atrocities committed by Turkish-backed fighters on those very allies.”
The footage shown by ABC matches a video posted to YouTube in 2017 called “Knob Creek Machine Gun Night Shoot 2016.”
Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky, hosts a “Military Gun Shoot and Military Gun Show” on a regular basis, according to Gizmodo.
“The Machine Gun Shoot & Military Gun Show is a bi-annual event, typically held on the second weekend of April and October,” the gun range’s website says.
“A wide variety of rare and exotic weaponry will be on display for all to see, such as Water Cooled Brownings, Mini-guns, AK-47’s, MG-42’s, Tommy Guns, M-16’s, Vickers belt fed, Uzi’s, MP5’s & many others too numerous to mention. “
Later in the “World News Tonight” segment, ABC foreign correspondent Ian Pannell repeats Llamas’ claim of the footage’s authenticity.
“This video, obtained by ABC News, appears to show the fury of the Turkish attack on the border town of Tell Abyad two nights ago,” Pannell says.
According to Gizmodo, ABC had posted the segment on YouTube but took it down when Gizmodo contacted the network.
ABC has since issued a correction.
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
“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’s “World News Tonight” tweeted.
“ABC News regrets the error.”
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