Is this an apple or a banana? That’s the question we’re all asking after two CNN reporters fell for an obvious photoshop showing a Tunisian being hoisted into the air by protesters while appearing to hold a chainsaw.
It was an obvious photoshop. Ben Wedeman, CNN’s senior international correspondent, first tweeted the image.
“The [sic] IS the shot of the day as Tunisians, who managed to preserve their revolution against tyranny, protest the upcoming visit of #Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. #Khashoggi #Tunisia,” Wedeman tweeted.
The tweet is still up, for now. It’s such an obvious photoshop that one might wonder whether Wedeman knew this when he shared the image.
But it appears CNN’s chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto, was unaware of the fake, as he retweeted Wedeman’s tweet, adding “wow.” Sciutto has since deleted his tweet without explanation after leaving it up for an hour.
As The Daily Caller’s Peter J. Hasson noted, the image is actually from 2011 and contained no chainsaw — it was a small cage with a Tunisian flag on it.
The left-leaning media has gone all in against Saudi Arabia after Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Khashoggi occasionally wrote op-eds for The Washington Post, and therefore has received martyr status by the U.S. media, despite the fact that he’s not a citizen and sympathized with the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization (though not designated by the U.S. government as such).
President Donald Trump released a statement on November 20 saying the U.S. would not end its relationship with Saudi Arabia over the death of one man. This, naturally, angered U.S. media outlets that already hate Trump even more. Left-leaning outlets have already pounced on any information that made Saudi Arabia look bad, leading to retractions. In October, Reuters had to retract an article claiming the Saudi consul in Istanbul was fired and being investigated after it fell for a fake news website modeled to look like an old version of the Saudi online newspaper Sabq.
As always, these mistakes always seem to favor one side.
At least we’ll get some more decent photoshops out of the episode.
This article has been updated with additional tweets.