ABC apologizes for airing video of gun range during Syria report

ABC News aired footage apparently taken from a Kentucky gun range during a report on attacks taking place in Syria.

• The footage, which depicts a large scale explosion, appeared on “ABC World News Tonight” Sunday, Oct. 13, 2019.
• “This video, right here, appearing to show Turkey’s military bombing Kurd civilians in a Syrian border town,” anchor Tom Llamas said while the video played on the studio’s oversized video wall.
• The footage also appeared briefing on “Good Morning America” Oct. 14 in the teases before the show started.
• ABC News has issued an apology, but no explanation, as to why the error was made.
• Versions of the video with the erroneous footage have also been removed.
• The video appears to match one on YouTube called “Knob Creek night shoot 2017” which an employee confirmed was shot at the facility.
• While networks do have checks and processes in place to ensure the veracity of imagery, this one obviously slipped through — perhaps due to it being a weekend and breaking news.

The mixup caught the eye of Donald Trump, who called out ABC for airing a “fake” video.

• It’s worth noting that, while the video was not depicting the correct event, it wasn’t fake per se — as it appears to depict an actual event.
• It’s also not a so-called “deepfake” video that shows a video so realistically modified that shows people saying things they never said or doing things they never did.
• Trump himself has been known to spread doctored videos that take real life footage and add other elements over it — such as one where he attacks a person with the CNN logo over its head.