A video broadcast on ABC News Sunday night that claimed to depict a Turkish bombing against Kurds in northern Syria was actually footage from a 2017 Kentucky military show, Gizmodo reported.
Both ABC News anchor Tom Llamas and foreign correspondent Ian Panell described the video as depicting a military bombing in Syria during Sunday night’s broadcast. “This video, obtained by ABC News, appears to show the fury of the Turkish attack on the border town of Tal Abyad two nights ago,” said Panell, while Llamas told viewers the footage appeared to show “Turkey’s military bombing Kurd civilians in a Syrian border town.”
However, according to Gizmodo, the explosions in the video broadcast on ABC News appear identical to those in a video available on YouTube titled “Knob Creek night shoot 2017.” That video shows footage from a biannual event hosted at Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky, where members of the public can pay to see weapons fired at night.
Far-right social media users, including self-described “video researcher” and “Trump supporter” Wojciech Pawelczyk, were reportedly the first to question the video’s authenticity.
Wow! ABC News is trying to pass gun range videos as combat footage from Syria pic.twitter.com/zfTWtwwSfZ
— Wojciech Pawelczyk 🇵🇱🇺🇸 (@PolishPatriotTM) 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,” an ABC News spokesperson told Gizmodo. “ABC News regrets the error.”
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