“Did you know that Kentucky is in Syria? Or that Tripoli is in India? Or that Caracas is in Singapore? No? Then you must not be paying enough attention in MSM Geography 101, class. Better hit the books!”

A few days ago ABC broadcast “shocking footage” of a Turkey’s military “slaughtering” Kurds in a Syrian border village.

The only problem is that the video shows no such thing, and is – in fact – footage of a gun show demonstration in Kentucky in 2016.

James Corbett’s video (above), as usual, does an excellent job breaking down the situation, as well as listing other examples of completely fake “news” footage and photographs being passed off as real. [For an audio only version, links, sources and show notes click here].

That video was “fake news” (or “accidentally misattributed” if you’re in the mood to be charitable), is not disputed. ABC took the footage down and issued a correction.

While twitter made it a punchline and other media personalities bemoaned the “mistake” which makes them all look bad, Corbett is right to focus on the most important question – How does something like this happen?

As he points out, even if you go out of your way to be fair and nice and forgiving – even if you twist your brain into a pretzel trying to accept this all happened by accident – just think about what that means.

It means that ABC’s “man on the ground” (Ian Pannell*) received some footage labelled “Turkish army attacking Kurdish village”, didn’t check it in the slightest and broadcast it without a thought. That is a tale of such laughable negligence you’d expect all involved to be fired, or at least censured. Nothing like that has happened, or will.

It’s far more likely it was a deliberate lie. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest as much.

Firstly, the video is edited. The original Kentucky footage is slightly different, the ABC news footage has been zoomed and/or cropped to cut out the watching audience and had a filter added to make it look grainy and dusty.

Secondly, there are Pannell’s own words – “the footage appears to show”. “Appears” is classic media weasel-word. It can be used in many different ways, but mostly it’s about plausible deniability.

If you doubt the veracity of footage just add “appears”, and its instantly not your problem when it turns out to be fake. I didn’t know, I was as deceived as anybody, something about it just didn’t sit right…

Why does Pannell use this word? What reason could he have for qualifying his language?

He’s obviously either protecting himself in the event his amateurish deception is exposed, or covering himself because he’s just broadcasting fake footage he was sent by someone with more authority.

Logic would suggest there’s only one source from which ABC would accept footage without confirming it before broadcast, or for whom they would broadcast what they knew was a lie – the US government, or one of the Deep States many acronymed hydra-heads.

Important questions:

Who edited the video?

Who sent the footage to ABC?

Did anyone at studio know it was lie?

Will Ian Pannell ever get fired?



…why on Earth did they ever think this would work?

*Regular readers, or followers of Robert Stuart’s work, may find the name Ian Pannell ringing a bell. Mr Pannell is also known for his involvment in the Panorama episode “Saving Syria’s Children”, which evidence suggests was also faked. For details see our articles on the subject, or read Robert Stuart’s website here.