The Clickbait Award for Hysteria in Journalism goes to…

Today the media is running the claim by the Turkish government that their military “shot down” a drone from an unidentified source 3km inside Turkish airspace. An anonymous US spokesperson was, of course, immediately on hand to tell us he thought the drone was “probably” Russian. Whether that is true will presumably become apparent in due course.

The Guardian*, like many other mainstream outlets, decided not to run a photo of the drone in question. Which of course allowed the impression to remain that it was some sort of military attack drone like this:

But in fact it was this:

A 2-3 ft long surveillance or civilian drone of some kind.

But that didn’t stop the Independent producing this as a headline:

.

Just another reminder, this is the “aircraft” they are talking about:

Some observers have also pointed out the tiny drone in question looks in awful good shape for something that size that has allegedly been shot down by a military jet. But that’s another issue.

*Since the article was published the Guardian has now added a photo of the drone to its coverage, likely in response to repeated requests in the comments