https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/clarissa-ward-staged-syria-report-exposes-cnn-bias-again

How Clarissa Ward's 'staged' Syria report exposes CNN's bias yet again

CNN's Clarissa Ward has come under fire for her 11 December report about a Syrian prisoner.

Ward's taped package was presented as though she and her CNN team had helped rescue a Syrian civilian from one of Bashar al-Assad's prisons.

The dramatic scenes were captured on video, with Ward appearing shocked when the hiding prisoner emerged from under a blanket.

In a sequence resembling a Hollywood production, the terrified prisoner is shown tightly clutching Ward's arm and begging for water.

Viewers quickly took to social media to identify bizarre aspects of the video and to suggest that the story appeared to be staged by Ward and her CNN team.

Staging allegations aside, the report underscores broader issues with CNN and Ward.

'Hollywoodisation of news'

First, the story exemplifies what media scholars have long called the "Hollywoodisation of news".

Rather than seeking to inform and educate audiences, outlets like CNN often prioritise entertainment, employing sensationalist techniques.

For example, during the first week of Israel's war on Gaza in October 2023, Ward was accused by some viewers of sensationalising a live report delivered while lying in a ditch.

More broadly, CNN is part of a mainstream American media apparatus that appears to be at least as devoted to "infotainment" as it is to traditional news functions.

Media scholar Daya Thussu's work on infotainment specifically highlighted CNN and other all-news cable channels for their "discernible tendency" to "sacrifice depth in favour of the widest and quickest reach of live infotainment spectacle". Thussu notes that CNN propelled itself in part by hiring an entertainment media veteran as one of its senior executives.

CNN as saviour

Second, and perhaps even more troubling, is that Ward's story attempts to present CNN as a saviour.

During their ousting of Assad, Syrian rebels freed thousands of prisoners. Rather than a report focusing on these (or other) prisoners, Ward and CNN sought to spotlight their journalists and sell an ostensible CNN rescue operation.

Edward Said's Covering Islam offers a classic analysis of this phenomenon, highlighting how western news outlets often depict themselves, white people, or western governments as saviours for cultural "Others" in the Orient.

However, such narratives are problematic, as they rarely reflect reality.

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In Ward's case, the prisoner she helped "rescue" turned out to be a former Assad regime intelligence officer, not a civilian victim of Assad's brutality.

Fact-checkers later demonstrated that CNN misidentified the man, incorrectly stated that he had been detained for three months, and misreported the reason for his arrest, among other inaccuracies.

This incident, while significant, is merely a minor blip in CNN's long track record of questionable reporting. More troubling is how Ward's story fits into the network's broader, systemic issues.

CNN's recent reporting on Israel's genocide in Gaza, for example, highlights a disturbing pattern of regurgitating Israeli propaganda rather than holding criminals to account or coming to the aid of victims.

For the better part of 14 months, CNN has done little more than parrot Israeli government talking points.

In November 2023, CNN's Nic Robertson embedded himself with the Israeli army in Gaza, effectively turning himself into a tool of Israeli propaganda.

In one particularly embarrassing report, Robertson uncritically accepted a false Israeli army claim that an Arabic language calendar posted on the wall of a children's hospital in Gaza was a roster of terrorists.

Ana Maria Monjardino, who recently resigned from CNN over its pro-Israel reporting, explained the fiasco: "Robertson ignored an alert from a Palestinian colleague that [the calendar] was not a [terrorist] roster, but a calendar listing the days of the week."

Similarly, CNN's Dana Bash and Jake Tapper have also been called out for uncritical acceptance of false mass rape claims and inaccurate casualty figure reporting, respectively.

Biased coverage

A recent study by The Nation found that over a one-year period, Bash and Tapper’s weekly State of the Union programme did not platform a single Palestinian or Palestinian-American guest.

The study found that the programme regularly featured Israeli guests, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who appeared twice for interviews with Bash.

During these interviews, Bash avoided substantive criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza and uncritically accepted a debunked Israeli claim suggesting that Palestinian fighters were using Gaza’s main hospital as a military “command and control centre".

Additionally, recent peer-reviewed research found that CNN's Instagram reporting was heavily skewed toward Israel.

CNN used about seven times as many Israeli sources as Palestinian sources in videos and post captions.

CNN also provided significantly more personal details about Israeli victims (1.33 details per post) compared to Palestinian victims (0.37 details per post). Additionally, CNN regularly framed Israeli violence as "self-defence".

The least that can be said is that these reporting trends reflect a complete lack of journalistic professionalism, especially given that scholars and human rights organisations have concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

The worst that can be said is that CNN's coverage renders it complicit in genocide.

Lack of accountability

Neither CNN nor Ward appears particularly willing to own up to their faults on Gaza or Syria.

CNN did not respond to an inquiry over false Gaza reporting, and Bash slammed a Code Pink protester who confronted her over CNN's pro-Israel propaganda.

In interviews, Ward has demonstrated a near-complete lack of awareness about Gaza war-time realities.

In a July 2024 interview in Rolling Stone, Ward laments not being able to report more from Gaza but failed to criticise - or even mention - Israel.

In a separate interview with The New Yorker, Ward obfuscated reality by blaming "both Egypt and Israel" for the lack of access to Gaza.

Ward's comments and tone about Israel and Gaza seem strikingly out of place for an international correspondent tasked with understanding on-the-ground realities.

It is as if Ward is oblivious to the fact that Israel is singlehandedly responsible for preventing journalistic access to Gaza, is waging a broader war on journalism, and now holds the grim distinction of setting a world record for killing journalists.

Public trust

Neither Ward nor CNN have accepted responsibility for the misleading Syria prisoner report.

The network has not apologised for its journalistic malpractice, nor has it retracted Ward's false original report.

Instead, CNN has quietly edited the report on its website to downplay inaccuracies and framed new information as though it were part of a routine update to a developing story.

Ward's most recent post on X fails to acknowledge any wrongdoing. It states only: "We can confirm the real identity of the man from our story last Wednesday as Salama Mohammed Salama."

The post has generated thousands of comments, with hundreds of users calling for Ward's dismissal and demanding that CNN apologise for false reporting.

The likely result of Ward's Syria reporting fiasco, combined with CNN's broader reporting failures, is the continued erosion of public trust.

Recent Gallup polling shows that American public confidence in news media has fallen to an all-time low, with only 31 percent of Americans expressing a "great deal" or "fair amount" of confidence in media.

This mistrust is fuelled by the kind of sensationalism, inaccuracy, and imbalance that have characterised both Ward's Syria prisoner report and CNN's coverage of Israeli actions in Gaza.