CNN tries to dodge blame for its fake ‘freed Syrian prisoner’ story

CNN recently released a report claiming to show a Syrian prisoner coming out of his prison cell and seeing sunlight for the first time in months. Many people watching this immediately raised questions about how realistic the report was. But then, fact checkers revealed that the man in question was actually “a former intelligence officer in the Bashar al-Assad government”.

Was the story fabricated?

As fact-checking site Verify-Sy reported, the prisoner:

claimed he had not seen sunlight for three months. However, his reaction to the light did not match such a claim—he did not flinch or blink even when gazing up at the sky

It added that:

Despite the purported harsh treatment of detainees in secret prisons, [the man] appeared clean, well-groomed, and physically healthy, with no visible injuries or signs of torture—an incongruous portrayal of someone allegedly held in solitary confinement in the dark for 90 days.

The title of its fact check was:

Did CNN Fabricate the Story of “Freeing a Syrian Detainee from a Secret Prison”?

Whether it was intentional or not is not an easy question to answer. However, the fact-checking investigation revealed that the prisoner’s real name was actually Salama Mohammad Salama. And he appeared to be, in reality:

a first lieutenant in Syrian Air Force Intelligence, notorious for his activities in Homs. Residents of the Al-Bayyada neighborhood identified him as frequently stationed at a checkpoint in the area’s western entrance, infamous for its abuses.

It also claimed he had been “involved in theft, extortion, and coercing residents into becoming informants”. It added:

According to locals, his recent incarceration—lasting less than a month—was due to a dispute over profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer.

CNN releases clarification, but no apology

Online, people criticised CNN‘s reporting as “irresponsible” and “shambolic”. And when CNN faced up to its mistake, it didn’t apologise. It just tried to shift blame onto the prisoner.

Unfortunately, it’s not new for CNN to make bad calls. At the start of 2024, for example, its own journalists claimed that the organisation’s leadership had been responsible for heavily skewing coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

As the Guardian reported, this was the result of “management edicts and a story-approval process that has resulted in highly partial coverage”. One employee slammed the “systemic and institutional bias within the network toward Israel” which amounted to “journalistic malpractice”.

The truth is that, for all the talk of fake news, some of the most shameless producers of it are the mainstream media outlets that automatically expect the public to trust them unreservedly.

Featured image via screengrab