Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot October 2017/a> by Zombie Power Drink/Fair Use/screen capture

Yesterday, ABC News combined the roles of Leni Riefenstahl and Josef Goebbels for the NeverTrump movement by releasing a video that purported to be Turkish forces attacking “our allies”. (Thought experiment, if “our allies” are working in coordination with Russia and Iran and Assad’s Syria, what does that make us?) The purpose was clearly to stoke the hysteria over the withdrawal of a few hundred US troops from their role of trip-wire-and-speed-bump calculated to restrain the actions of the Turkish military in Syria and convert this action into an electoral issue.

The video originated from a firepower demonstration billed as “The World’s Largest Machine Gun Shoot and Military Gun Show” at the privately owned Knob Creek Gun Range near West Point, KY.

Sorry, wrong video. This is the actual clip ABC edited for broadcast.

ABC News is portraying this as some huge mistake

CORRECTION: We’ve taken down video that aired on “World News Tonight" Sunday and “Good Morning America” this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy. ABC News regrets the error.

— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) October 14, 2019

CORRECTION: We’ve taken down video that aired on “World News Tonight" Sunday and “Good Morning America” this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy. ABC News regrets the error.

— Good Morning America (@GMA) October 14, 2019

But I think if you been involved with imagery, either video or still, at a professional level you have a great deal of difficulty in believing this story. Every film clip or image used has to have its provenance clearly established because, in most cases, you owe someone money for using it. Even if you simply ripped off a YouTube video, you need to know that in case some shyster hits you with a DCMA letter. Someone, probably a lot more than one person, at ABC knew this video was a misrepresentation and they still produced and aired the segment.

So where were our intrepid Fact Checkers here? As of this writing, neither Snopes.com nor Politifact.com have addressed the issue. Why is this important? The ABC clip was widely promoted during two of the most highly watched broadcast news programs in the country. The videos were pushed out on social media and shared by (conservatively) tens of thousands of people. Leftwing blogs picked up the video and spread the story to that critical Woke Illiterate demographic upon which the Democrat party depends.

While the video was eventually pulled down, the apology will only reach a small fraction of the people who saw the original. Within two weeks, you can say with some certainty that this news clip will be resurrected and recirculated. This is the kind of thing both Snopes (which seems to have some kind of sick sexual fantasy about Babylon Bee) and Politifact should be all over. But they aren’t? And it is fair to ask why the biggest media hoax of the past two days has been totally ignored by the people who are supposed to be ensuring that we only consume the purest and most unblemished forms of information.

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