Can you spell “fake news?” We can and ABC World News Tonight with David Muir earns today’s fake news award with extra cow-pie clusters for chutzpah. Last night, they broadcast footage from the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot and claimed it as Turkey’s military bombing Kurd civilians in Syria.
Here’s the glorious video clip, posted by big media ABC News on YouTube. (We have a backup copy in case they take it down in shame.)
Pay particularly close attention at the 11 second mark.
David Muir’s substitute breathlessly reports on how the situation is “rapidly spiraling out of control in Syria.”
Then they queue up the Knob Creek footage and he continues . . .
This video right here appearing to show the Turkish military bombing Kurd civilians in a Syrian border town. The Kurds, who fought alongside the US against ISIS now horrific reports of atrocities, committed by Turkish-backed fighters on those very allies…
The good news: no men, women, children or pets were injured or killed in that ABC News fake news clip. Because, of course, the Knob Creek Range has great people running it safely for everyone involved. Hundreds of thousands of rounds (if not millions) are fired each year and nobody gets hurt. Unless they trip and fall walking around behind the firing line, or get a blister from stuffing magazines.
Attending the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot stands as one thing every serious gun lover should do in their lifetime. And seeing that night shoot? Yeah, you don’t forget that. Take a look . . .
And arguably the best for last . . .
As you can see from the following side-by-side comparison of the footage below, the ABC News “World News Tonight” clip was clearly from Knob Creek.
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
It isn’t known whether they were duped or if they intentionally misrepresented the dramatic footage to spice up their report. Either way, it’s fake news of the highest order.
And that leads to the question…what else on yesterday’s “World News Tonight” was misleading, wrong, or just plain fake?
UPDATE: ABC has taken the video down. And they regret the error, so it’s all good.
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.
— Good Morning America (@GMA) October 14, 2019