A video featuring audio of someone off-screen apparently feeding directions to reporters suggests CNN staged footage of its correspondent and her team scrambling for cover on the Israel-Gaza border.
The footage has been altered to add fake audio. There’s no evidence the original footage was staged.
Posts shared on social media falsely suggest CNN staged footage of a journalist scrambling for cover from rockets near the Israel-Gaza border.
The footage shows CNN’s correspondent, Clarissa Ward, and other members of the press team running for cover and ducking in a road-side ditch.
Text overlaid on the footage says “DEVELOPING: CNN got caught faking an attack from Hamas in Israel.”
Audio added to the clip suggests the scene was staged and that someone off-screen was feeding directions to one of the team members over the phone. But CNN has said this audio is fake. The original live footage also has different audio.
The audio includes instructions to “look around as if you’re in danger”, keep the camera “nice and tight on Clarissa” for the “money shot” and “boost the volume on the explosions”.
Some versions also show Arabic text (translated using Google) saying: “CNN forgets that it is on the air, and the director directs the news correspondent and the cameraman on the phone to pretend that they are exposed to Hamas rockets when he tells her to look around in a way that you are terrified. Expose them and spread it”.
One Facebook post sharing the altered video has more than 25,000 shares.
There are multiple posts on social media claiming the footage has been staged including on X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and Facebook with captions such as “CNN caught staging fake attacks in Israel” and “fake coverage!”
A spokesperson for CNN told reporters at the New York Post that the audio added to the video is “fabricated, inaccurate and irresponsibly distorts the reality of the moment that was covered live on CNN”.
Full Fact has contacted CNN and will update the article if we receive a response.
The original footage was broadcast by CNN on 9 October and explosions can be heard in the background. A member of the team, who is wearing a press vest and appears to be on the phone, reassures the team that the sounds are coming from the “Iron Dome”, Israel’s missile defence system. There’s no evidence the scene was staged.
In the full report, Ms Ward describes hearing a “barrage of rockets” and the “Iron Dome intercepting a number of those rockets [...] not too far from here”. The clip goes on to show what she refers to as “ground zero” where Hamas first breached the border in its attack on 7 October.
Misinformation is common during large scale news events and can appear in convincing forms. Full Fact has written about other claims relating to recent events in Israel and the Gaza Strip, including old videos of President Putin and President Erdogan with mis-translated subtitles, a fake US government memo authorising $8 billion in aid for Israel, and multiple misleading videos.
It’s important to double check whether a video shows what it claims to before sharing it online—you can read our guide for more information on how to verify videos concerning the Israel-Gaza conflict.
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Image courtesy of Josh Hallett |
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because the audio implying the footage was staged is fake and has been added later.
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