CNN Confirms It Was Duped by Syrian Intelligence Officer in Fake Prisoner Freedom Video

CNN confirmed on Monday it was duped by Syrian Air Force intelligence officer Salama Mohammad Salama, who posed as a hapless civilian prisoner named “Adel Ghurbal” so CNN could free him on-camera.

The ratings-challenged network desperately pushed the video as a viral sensation, only to find itself with a journalistic disaster on its hands.

CNN conceded it had been duped the day after an independent Syrian news network called Verify-Sy identified Salama. Verify-Sy castigated CNN for abandoning good journalistic practices in its mad rush to create an “extraordinary” viral video.

Many other online critics noted that CNN missed some very obvious signs that “Adel Ghurbal’s” story did not add up, including the simple fact that he looked amazingly robust and well-groomed for a man who had supposedly been imprisoned without food and water for three days and held prisoner by Syria’s notoriously abusive intelligence agencies for three months before that.

CNN’s embarrassment was all the worse because the reporter who got hoodwinked by Salama was its chief international correspondent, Clarissa Ward. Ward tersely noted the confirmation of Salama’s identity on her X account late Monday afternoon, and has posted nothing since then:

Over 24 hours after Verify-Sy scooped CNN on the true identity of its celebrity “freed prisoner,” CNN followed in the Syrian network’s footsteps and talked to people in the city of Homs who confirmed the prisoner was actually a brutal thug who has been accused of corruption and torture:

A resident of the Bayada neighborhood in Homs gave CNN a photograph said to be of the same man while he was on duty, in what appears to be a government office. Facial recognition software provided a match of more than 99 percent with the man CNN met in the Damascus prison cell. The photograph shows him sitting at a desk, apparently in military clothing. CNN is not publishing the photo to protect the source’s anonymity.

As CNN continued to pursue information about the freed prisoner after the original report, multiple residents of Homs said that the man was Salama, also known as Abu Hamza. They told CNN that he was known for running the Air Force Intelligence Directorate’s checkpoints in the city and accused him of having a reputation for extortion and harassment.

CNN gave a grudging hat tip to Verify-Sy at the end of its report, and admitted it has lost contact with the monster it helped to set free.

The damage to CNN’s reputation has already been cataclysmic and this was not a network that could afford another journalism scandal. Most of the network’s high-profile employees pushed Ward’s video as an incredible piece of groundbreaking journalism before Salama’s true identity was discovered.

The Media Research Center (MRC) noted on Tuesday that CNN devoted a “massive” 56 minutes of airtime to “repeated airings and subsequent fawnings” over the Ward video. The saturation coverage lasted until early Saturday night, right around the time Verify-Sy dropped its bombshell debunking of CNN’s prize video.

“After airing the footage for the first time, The Lead host Jake Tapper gushed Ward’s report was ‘just absolutely remarkable’ and ‘another’ case of ‘vital, vital journalism,’ while Ward herself took these claims as gospel,” the MRC wrote.

Al Jazeera News quoted enraged Syrians and international critics who demanded an apology from CNN, along with a thorough explanation for why the network did nothing to confirm the identity of the man it rescued from prison in a viral video:

It should be noted that some of those critics question CNN’s claim that Salama easily duped the network’s senior foreign correspondent with a fairly obvious ruse. These critics suggest the network staged the entire scene knowing Salama was a fraud because the network was desperate for a ratings boost. CNN continues to insist it had no idea the man in the video was a Syrian intelligence agent.

Some other journalists have stepped forward to defend Ward, including her opposite number at the far more popular Fox News, chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst:

Yingst, like Ward, filed video reports from Syrian prisons last week while hunting for Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in Syria in 2012. The discovery last Wednesday of another American named Travis Timmerman languishing in a Syrian dungeon raised hopes that Tice might be found as well.