Did a CNN correspondent and a Croatian Radiotelevision journalist try to mislead viewers while reporting on the Hamas-Israel conflict? No, that's not true: A video purporting to show American journalist Clarissa Ward taking instructions in her earpiece has been manipulated while the Croatian journalist was reporting in an area where Israel issued rocket warnings.
The claim reappeared as a video (archived here) on TikTok on October 17, 2023, with a caption (translated into English from Croatian by Lead Stories staff) that read:
Western propaganda. This is how the media also works against Islam and succeeds in it. But that is their job because the Jews own and control them. Media at the service of the people. We only speak the truth, believe us, we are the voice of the people.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Oct 19 20:47:20 2023 UTC)
The TikTok video features a clip from the Serbian channel Informer Televizija where the presenter says:
Let's just watch the CNN video from on the ground, just to see the degree of manipulation with the information, I think it will be much clearer for you when you watch this.
The video then plays a manipulated CNN clip featuring international news correspondent Clarissa Ward running for cover near the Israel-Gaza border on October 9, 2023. Lead Stories has previously debunked a fake version of the clip that includes an altered audio track. In it, an added voice track gives the appearance that someone on a phone is providing instructions on how to make the scene more dramatic. The real CNN clip can be seen here.
Informer TV is a relatively new broadcast channel and is owned by the same parent company that runs the Serbian tabloid newspaper Informer, which has been criticized for some of its reporting. A report by the self-regulatory Serbian Press Council said the Informer newspaper has previously violated the Serbian Journalists' Code of Ethics. A 2021 European Parliament report into disinformation in the Balkans stated:
A primary role in state-sponsored disinformation campaigns is played by TV stations (prominently, TV Pink) and tabloids, including Kurir, Informer, and Srpski telegraf, which have significant reach and are used to echo the ruling party's smear campaigns against the opposition.
Near the end of the TikTok video another clip is played, this time showing national broadcaster Hrvatska Radiotelevizija (Croatia Radiotelevision) journalist Petar Vlahov reporting between the cities of Ashkelon and Tel Aviv on October 11, 2023. In the clip, the reporter says:
Here we are, having just witnessed one of the Hamas rocket strikes here on the territory of Israel. It is somewhere between Ashkelon and Tel Aviv. Several rockets fell in our vicinity. We saw how people reacted, we had to get out of the car immediately and wait for these rocket strikes to pass.
The clip from Croatia Radiotelevision was mocked on social media for exaggerating the danger and deceiving viewers because people were shown in the video in the background using their mobile phones and not wearing protective equipment while the journalist was crouching down wearing a battlefield helmet and no body armor.
Vlahov spoke to Croatian newspaper Večernji List and explained the context of the moment shown, saying:
The reason why others were looking at the cell phones around us is that they were waiting to see if another wave of attacks would come.
Israel maintains a cellphone alert system in the event of incoming rocket attacks.
NBC posted video of the Hamas missiles targeting Ashkelon on the same day that Vlahov was reporting about the topic.
